§ III.—CHAPTER I.

MORAL INTUITIVE EVIDENCE.

THE theistic evidence universally runs back into a region of First Truths or Principles. It rests only on a definite spiritual philosophy, as we have seen in the outset. It remains to be further seen how it only attains to its highest force and significance in the same region. An attentive examination of certain features of our spiritual life will be found to yield a set of theistic elements of a peculiarly direct and important kind, which are necessary to complete our evidence, and to carry upwards the conceptions of power, wisdom, and goodness, already unfolded, into the full conception of God.

We deem it unnecessary to enter into any question as to the separate force and value of this department of evidence. All such questions are, according to our view, quite irrelevant. For the genuine apprehension of the theistic evidence is not that of a series of separate and independent proofs, but that of a great scheme of argument presenting itself under a variety of aspects. All special instances of design derive their conclusive force from certain principles; 252and these principles again must be seen in practical manifestation, in order to bring before us a lively and clear impression of the Divine existence and attributes.

In assigning a distinctive name to this section, we do not mean, therefore, to detach it from our inductive scheme of evidence. We mean simply to point out the distinctive range of inquiry before us, which is sufficiently marked off from that in which we have been engaged. We are no longer merely to be concerned with facts from which we are warranted to infer Divine wisdom and goodness, but with facts which, in a peculiar sense, reveal to us God, which bring God before us intuitively, rather than in the ordinary inductive way. We enter among those prime elements of our spiritual constitution which are the appropriate organs of the theistic conception. This conception, in its radical form of cause, took its rise in this region, and here no less is it found to complete itself.

This may serve to explain the views of some of our highest thinkers as to the supposed conclusive force of the moral, in comparison with all other evidence for the being of a God. Kant, after submitting to a destructive criticism all the other modes of theistic evidence, as separately apprehended in his day, made the existence of God a postulate of our moral being; and Sir W. Hamilton has expressly said that “the only valid arguments for the existence of a God, and for the immortality of the human soul, rest on the ground of man’s moral nature.”¹⁴¹¹⁴¹   Philosophical Discussions, p. 595. Now, in so far as such views merely imply that to the region of moral consciousness 253must be traced the foundation of the theistic argument, and its peculiar seat, we are prepared to coincide with them. But we cannot assent to any view which would limit the evidence to this region. It finds here its peculiar home; but it by no means stops here. Springing from the depths of our moral consciousness, it is taken up by the intellectual common sense; and the special argument from design is neither more nor less than the application which is thus made of the primary theistic principle. It becomes us not to forget the origin of the principle—through which alone the idea of design is tenable—but it becomes us also to acknowledge the appropriate value and the clear and impressive bearing of this idea, as applied to the display of the Divine attributes. The theistic evidence is only seen in its full strength when it is thus recognised in its full comprehensiveness.