Dr. Carpenter says, "Force must be regarded as the direct expression of will."3 And Wallace brings out the point very clearly when he says, "If we have traced one force, however minute, to an origin in our own will, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of force, it does not seem an improbable conclusion that all force may be will-force, and thus the whole universe is not only dependent on, but actually is the will of higher intelligences or of one SUPREME INTELLIGENCE."4 Thus, we find that while man intuitively feels the presence of divinity and possesses a nature that prompts him to religious devotions, he is able to obtain a more consistent and rational conception of the divine, self-existing, all-sufficient One by a process of reflective thought. This knowledge of the being of God having been laid in human nature is not the subject of revelation, but is a necessary antecedent for that divine revelation. The writers of the Christian Scriptures assume, but do not so much as even affirm, the being and existence of God. The first chapter of the Bible opens with the words, "In the beginning God cre 3 Human Physiology, p. 542. 4 Natural Selection, p. 368. the will I am indebted to Dr. tion of the World, p. 39. For these quotations on Cocker, Theistic Concep ated the heaven and the earth." Hence it may be said that the Scriptures do not come to us as a revelation of the existence of a higher power, but are a revelation from God showing his relations with mankind. In other words, they point out to fallen man the way back to God. Without those primitive ideas, man could neither comprehend nor appreciate an attempted revelation. There must be something in his nature corresponding to the object and end of such a revelation; and it is found in the fact that he intuitively recognizes the presence of the divine (which primitive belief bears the most rigid examination of the developing intellect) and feels an inward inclination to reverence and worship. In other words, he possesses a religious nature. The fear of God, however, precedes the love of God. Among savages, whose mental powers are undeveloped, the operation of destructive agencies in nature make the deepest impression upon the mind, and hence their deities are generally conceived to be revengeful or malignant spirits. The developing intellect, however, soon discerns so many evidences of goodness and of beneficence in nature that more exalted notions of divine beings come to be entertained, and eventually the monotheistic idea is reached. While to us who have obtained God's written revelation telling what he has already done and will yet do for mankind, there are so many evidences of his paternal care that all of our slavish fears are banished, and "we love him, because he first loved us." "Give us a God-a living God, -C. G. Rosenberg. CHAPTER II. CONSCIENCE. In the preceding chapter we have shown the universal prevalence of the religious sentiment by its various systems and forms of external manifestation; but the subject is incomplete without a consideration of conscience, which is a constituent of the religious nature. Men not only intuitively realize the presence of the Unseen Power, but also feel a sense of dependence and of moral obligation growing out of their relations with that higher power; and this native feeling of the soul that a standard of right and wrong exists and that it is one's duty to conform to that standard is what we term conscience. This sentiment also is common to all men; for all instinctively feel that they are moral beings, placed under a moral law enacted by a Moral Governor. In view of the universal belief in a future state in which men will be the recipients of rewards and punishments determined by their conduct in this life, this subject of moral accountability is extremely important, and it has always exerted a powerful influence upon the human mind. Still we would not have it otherwise; for we could by no means desire the extinction of our rational will and a consequent degradation to the plane of inanimate nature, nor even to that of the animal kingdom below us. "What!" exclaimed Rousseau, "to render man incapable of evil, would we have him lowered to mere brute instinct? No! God of my soul, I will not reproach thee for having made me in thine image, so that I might be good and free and happy like thyself." Darwin says: "A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity."1 Bishop Butler describes man's moral susceptibility thus: "That which renders beings capable of moral government, is their having a moral nature, and moral faculties of perception and of action. Brute creatures are impressed and actuated by various instincts and propensions; so also are we. But additional to this, we have a capacity of reflecting upon actions and characters and making them an object to our thought; and on doing this, we naturally and unavoidably approve some actions, under the peculiar view of their being virtuous and 1 Descent of Man, p. 108. |