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THE NATURE, CONDITIONS, AND LIMITS OF THEISTIC PROOF.

I.

If we believe that there is one God—the Creator, Preserver, and Ruler of all finite beings—we ought to have reasons or grounds for this belief. We can have no right to believe it simply because we wish or will to believe it. The grounds or reasons which we have for our belief must be to us proofs of God's existence. Those who affirm that God exists, and yet deny that His existence can be proved, must either maintain a position obviously erroneous, or use the term proof in some extraordinary sense, fitted only to perplex and mislead. True and weighty, therefore, seem to me these words of one of the most distinguished of living German philosophers: "The proofs for the existence of God, after having long played a great part in philosophy and theology, have in recent times, especially since Kant's famous critique, fallen into disrepute. Since then, the opinion has been widely spread, both among believers and unbelievers, that the existence of God does not admit of being proved. Even theologians readily assent to this opinion, deride the vain attempts, and imagine that in so doing they are serving the faith which they preach. But the proofs for the existence of God coincide with the grounds for the belief in God; they are simply the real grounds of the belief established and expounded in a scientific manner. If there be no such proofs, there are also no such grounds; and a belief which has no ground, if possible at all, can be no proper belief, but an arbitrary, self-made, subjective opinion. Yes, religious belief must sink to the level of the mere illusion or fixed idea of a mind which is insane, if contradicted by all reality, all facts scientifically established, and the theory of the universe which such facts support and justify."[11]

The proofs of God's existence must be, in fact, simply His own manifestations; the ways in which He makes Himself known; the phenomena on which His power and character are imprinted. They can neither be, properly speaking, our reasonings, nor our analyses of the principles involved in our reasonings. Our reasonings are worth nothing except in so far as they are expositions of God's modes of manifestation; and even when our reasonings are correct, our analyses of them, supposing we attempt to analyse them, may be erroneous. The facts—the works and ways of God—which are the real evidences of His existence and the true indications of His character—may raise countless minds to God which can give no general description of the process by which they are thus elevated, and are still less capable of resolving it into its principles. It is late in the history both of the individual mind and of the collective mind before they can so reflect on their own acts, so distinguish them one from another, and so discern the characteristics of each, as to be able even to give a clear and correct account of them; and it is much later before they can detect their conditions and laws. The minds of multitudes may therefore readily be supposed to rise legitimately from perception of the visible universe to apprehension of the invisible personal Creator, although either wholly unconscious or only dimly and inaccurately aware of the nature of the transition, and although, if called on to indicate the conclusion at which they had arrived, they would employ far weaker reasons in words than those by which they were actually convinced in thought. The principles of the theistic inference may be very badly determined, and yet the theistic inference itself may be perfectly valid.

If the real proofs of God's existence are all those facts which cannot be reasonably conceived of as other than the manifestations of God—His glory in the heavens, His handiwork on the earth, His operations in the soul, His ways among the nations—and if the task of the theist is to trace out these facts, and to show that they cannot reasonably be denied to be marks or impressions of Divine agency, then must a theist, when seeking or expounding the reasons for his belief, feel that his mind is conversant not with mere thoughts of his own, but with the manifested thoughts or acts of God Himself. He must carry into his inquiry the consciousness that he is not simply engaged in an intellectual process, but is trying to apprehend and actually apprehending the Divine Being. To him, therefore, the inquiry as to the ultimate source and reason of things must be an essentially solemn and awe-inspired one. To the atheist it must, of course, be much less so; but even he ought to feel it to be not only a most important inquiry, but one which carries him into the presence of a vast, eternal, and mysterious power—a power in darkness shrouded, yet on which hang all life and death, all joy and woe.

According to the view just stated, the evidences or proofs of God's existence are countless. They are to be found in all the forces, laws, and arrangements of nature—in every material object, every organism, every intellect and heart. At the same time, they concur and coalesce into a single all-comprehensive argument, which is just the sum of the indications of God given by the physical universe, the minds of men, and human history. Nothing short of that is the full proof. There may be points in space and instants in time where creative and sustaining power appear to our narrow and superficial intellects to have been strangely limited, but surely we ought not so to concentrate our attention on any such points or instants as to be unable to take in a general impression of the immeasurable power displayed throughout the realms of space and the ages of time. It may be possible to show that many things which have been regarded as evidences of intelligence or wisdom are not really so, and yet the universe may teem with the manifestations of these attributes. Faith in the righteousness and moral government of God must be able to look over and to look beyond many things calculated to produce doubt and disbelief. No man can judge fairly as to whether or not there is a God, who makes the question turn on what is the significance of a few particular facts, who is incapable of gathering up into one general finding the results of innumerable indications. A true religious view of the world must be a wide, a comprehensive view of it, such as demands an eye for the whole and not merely for a part—the faculties which harmonise and unify, and not merely those which divide and analyse. A part, a point, the eye of an insect, the seed of a fruit, may indeed be looked at religiously, but it must be in the light of the universe as a whole, in the light of eternity and infinity.