LECTURE IX.

A PRIORI THEISTIC PROOF.

I.

THE arguments which we have been considering are not merely proofs that God is, but indications of what He is. They testify to the Divine existence by exhibiting the Divine character. They are expressions of how He manifests Himself, and expositions of how we apprehend His self-manifestations. We have seen that against each of them various objections have been urged, but that these objections when examined do not approve themselves to reason; they leave the arguments against which they have been thrown quite unshaken. These arguments, however, although perfectly conclusive so far as they go, do not, even in combination, yield us the full idea of God. which is entertained wherever theism prevails. They show Him to be the First Cause of the world-the Source of all the power, wisdom, and

goodness displayed therein. They do not prove Him to be infinite, eternal, absolute in being and perfection. Yet it cannot be questioned that the cultivated human mind thinks of God as the absolute, infinite, eternal, perfect First Cause, and that no lower idea of God can satisfy it. The intellect cannot accept, and the heart also revolts against, the thought that God is dependent on any antecedent or higher Being; that He is limited to a portion either of time or space; or that He is devoid of any excellence, deficient in any perfection. Such a thought is rejected as at once utterly unworthy of its object, and inherently inconsistent.

Are we, then, rationally warranted to assign to God those attributes which are called absolute or incommunicable? This is the question we have now to answer. What has been proved makes it comparatively easy to establish what is still unproved. We have ascertained that there is a God, the First Cause of the universe, the powerful, wise, good, and righteous Author of all things. We are conscious, also, that we have ideas of infinity, eternity, necessary existence, perfection, &c. We may be doubtful as to whence we obtained these ideas-we may feel that there is very much which is vague and perplexing in them; but we cannot question or deny that we have them. Having them, no matter how or whence we have

obtained them, and knowing that God is, as also in a measure what He is, the remaining question for us is, Must these ideas apply to God or not? Must the First Cause be thought of as eternal or notas infinite or finite, as perfect or imperfect? Reason, after it has reached a certain stage of culture, has never found this a difficult question. Indeed, often even before freeing itself from polytheism, it has been internally constrained to ascribe to some of the objects of adoration those very attributes of eternity, infinity, and perfection which polytheism implicitly denies. Once it has arrived at the belief that the universe has its origin in a rational and righteous creative Will, it can hardly refuse to admit that that Will must be infinite and eternal. Where it has rejected polytheism without accepting theism, it has been forced to acknowledge the world itself to be infinite and eternal. When it has risen beyond the world, when it has reached an intelligent cause of the world, it cannot, of course, refuse to that cause the perfections which it would have granted to the effect—to the Creator what it would have attributed to the creation. The first and ultimate Being, and not any derived and dependent Being, must obviously be the infinite, eternal, and perfect Being.

The proof that God is absolute in being and perfection should, it seems to me, not precede but follow the proofs that there is a cause sufficiently

powerful, wise, and good to account for physical nature, the mind of man, and the course of history. The usual mode of conducting the theistic argumentation has been the reverse; it has been to begin by endeavouring to prove, from principles held to be intuitive and ideas held to be innate, the necessary existence, absolute perfection, infinity, and eternity of God; or, in other words, with what is called the a priori or ontological arguments. This mode of procedure seems to me neither judicious nor effective. If we have not established that there is a God by reasoning from facts, we must demonstrate His existence from ideas but to get from the ideal to the actual may be impossible, and is certain to be difficult; whereas, if we have allowed facts to teach us all that they legitimately can about the existence, power, wisdom, and righteousness of God, it may be easy to show that our ideas of absolute being and perfection must apply to Him, and to Him only.

Theism, according to the view now expressed, is not vitally interested in the fate of the so-called a priori or ontological arguments. There may be serious defects in all these arguments, considered as formal demonstrations, and yet the conclusion which it is their aim to establish may be in no way compromised. It may be that the principles on which they rest do not directly involve the existence of God, and yet that they certainly, although

indirectly, imply it, so that whoever denies it is rationally bound to set aside the fundamental conditions of thought, and to deem consciousness essentially delusive. It may be that the a priori arguments are faulty as logical evolutions of the truth of the Divine existence from ultimate and necessary conceptions, and yet that they concur in manifesting that if God be not, the human mind is of its very nature self-contradictory; that God can only be disbelieved in at the cost of reducing the whole world of thought to a chaos. Whether this be the case or not, some of the a priori proofs are so celebrated that I cannot pass them over in entire silence.1

There is a charge which has been very often brought against the a priori proofs, but which may be at once set aside as incorrect. It has been alleged that they proceed on forgetfulness of the truth that the Divine existence is the first and highest reality, and therefore cannot be demonstrated from anything prior to or higher than itself. But in no case that I know of have those who adopted what they supposed to be the a priori line of argument been under the delusion that the ground of the existence of God was not in Himself, but in something outside of or above Himself, from which His existence could be deduced.. Such a notion is, in fact, so self-contradictory, that no

1 See Appendix XXXVI.