Yea, this concept affirms its objective validity in that it takes up and unites the various necessary elements of human thought, and appears of its own nature as the one concept presupposed in every form of human thought, in every form of objective being, and especially in the correspondence of the two. The true link between the two realities of thinking soul and thinkable universe is found in the reality of God.

Sixthly, even necessary truths offer themselves in some sort to the soul of man for free and rational acceptance. As the conclusion of all ontological research, there remains the call to a choice; and in the last analysis intuition and trust, the act necessary and the act in some sort spontaneous, are seen blended together. The receptive attitude of insight toward fundamental truths is at the basis of all philosophy. But these truths, if not accepted to be with choice and joyfully held, do not cease their regulative function nor their insisting upon such acceptance. In the case of the concept most lofty and comprehensive, the elements of choice are of all the most important. Atheism, then, whether in the form which denies God, or in that which refuses to affirm him, must ever remain invidious. No courtesy of belles-lettres or Christian charity can altogether remove its odium. For atheism results from the refusal of the soul to affirm its confidence just upon the one subject of human knowledge which is not only most important and comprehensive as subject of knowledge, but also most obligatory and helpful as object of trust and love.

With these preliminary remarks, we proceed now briefly to sketch the grounds within which lie all the proofs of the objective validity of the concept of God. The objective validity of the concept of God is given both as the postulate of conviction and as the result of argument.

The objective validity of this concept is the postulate of conviction. We may argue from the conviction; but it is not as furnishing the basis of argument that this conviction does its most efficient work. Its work is vital, rather than logical. History and self-consciousness alike show us that,

argue as they may, men cannot successfully argue against God that he is pleading his own cause with a hundred indestructible voices in the constitution of the soul. As the basis of the argument the postulate may seem a petilio principii; but as the vital effect of a divine self-revelation it will inevitably, in the long run and the large number, gain its holy cause. The undying conviction remains, and will do its work. To the conviction, indeed, in some form or other, all its sceptical critics are fain to come round. Mr. Spencer postulates an "inscrutable Power," which the universe manifests to us, as the most certain of all objective verities; Mr. Arnold, "an eternal not-ourselves, which makes for righteousness." We accept their concessions only as special and fragmentary forms of the same conviction which dwells within ourselves, viz. that by thinking man knows the reality of God. But the cause will live without their concessions: it has God and the soul upon its side.

The objective validity of the concept of God is also given as the result of argument. Science - it is true in some sort

may, if it will go deep enough, arrive at the underlying fact from which, as the postulate of conviction, religious instinct and faith take their rise. It does not, however, arrive at this fact by direct argument. The objective validity of the concept of God cannot be the conclusion of a direct argument. For the ontological difficulties, in the case of this concept as elsewhere, concern first principles and the basis of all truth; and "first principles, as principles, admit of no direct proof, but only of indirect verification." In all consciousness the primal, most important elements never emerge to be looked at in their naked and abstract reality; yet they are just the elements which are underneath and present in every act of consciousness, and which alone make self-consciousness possible. Strictly speaking, there is no consciousness of the ego, nor of freedom, nor of time, nor of space, nor of any of the necessary forms of thought. The real things are the very ones which I never meet face to face, and what I do thus meet is what I call phenomenal,

unreal. But in every act of self-consciousness there is found entangled, as postulates of all its acts, and of thinking and being as well, certain verities given to the human soul. Thus God is, so to speak, found entangled in all the phenomena of self-consciousness and of the objective universe.

It will be seen that what I have called the postulate of conviction is the same thing under another form with that which I now call the result of an argument. Only, in the argument the soul has become conscious of the postulatehas reasoned its way up to the postulate, and found it there.

The objective validity of the concept of God is reached as the conclusion of an indirect proof, when we consider God as the postulate of all thought. In all thought there are detected universal and necessary elements, and in every mind there is revealed a work of order and of rationality. If a "not-ourselves which makes for righteousness" is the postulate of moral law and order, a not-ourselves which makes for rationality, and reveals his own rationality within us, is the postulate of all thought. No explanation of evolution, no concatenation of phenomena, goes one step toward unfolding the mystery of human thought, until we ground it in a universal thinking being, not ourselves. All thought is possible for man only as a divine self-revelation; a divine revealer is the postulate of all thought. Cogito, ergo sum; Cogitamus, ergo Deus est; these sentences are alike not the inferences of a syllogism, but the simple averment of postulates of thought-one upon the subjective, the other upon the objective, side.

The objective validity of the concept of God is also reached as the conclusion of an indirect proof, when we consider God as the postulate of a thinkable universe. To be the object of thought the universe must be thinkable. Objective forms, adapted to reason, and therefore bearing the stamp of a rational author, are implied in the fact that the universe is, though only partially, at all intelligible to man. All science of nature, so-called, implies the objective validity of its underlying concept, which is the concept of an intelligible universe.

But the intelligible finite forms of the universe reveal, as their postulate, the same One who is revealed by the intelligent forms under which the thinker thinks them; both alike reveal God. He is therefore the postulate of an intelligible universe, the ground of the intelligible forms which the universe reveals to man. Behind all theories of ideas, behind all doctrines of evolution, behind all those philosophies of nature which deny to man any knowledge besides that of the phenomenal or which assert the existence of an unknowable Absolute, there lurk and play forever the twin forms of immortal conviction - the universe is intelligible, and man may know the reality of it. We must think the universe, if at all, under some form; and if we think it under any form, it must be that form under which it is given us to think. To try to think it under any other form than the highest, results in thinking it under some form lower than the best possible for man. In thinking the universe under the form of "sleeping plants" or "dreaming beasts," and so talking of "plastic life-principle" or "unconscious purpose to build," we do not escape the necessity of postulating a thinkable universe and objectively valid thought. In thinking the universe as grounded in the same One in whom we see our own thought to be grounded, we make a higher and more consistent use of the same postulates.

And from the subtile, but persistent and comprehensive, reciprocity of the thinking soul and the thinkable universe, we gather more than twofold strength to our conviction that the ground of both is in one thinking and creative God.

The objective validity of the concept of God is also reached as the conclusion of an indirect proof, when we consider God as the postulate of the world's evolution. There is a process of unfolding, there is a goal toward which the cosmos is moving. We see only fragments of the process, we catch only dim glimpses of the grand goal. To suppose that the laws of Darwinian evolution are anything more than the merest fragments of the whole, is to betray that foolish confidence in having reached an ultimatum, with which so

many thinkers have cheated themselves in all ages. Nor is Darwin, any more than Hegel, upon the right road to the secret of evolution - Hegel quite as much as Darwin; for the process of unfolding is as surely a process of thought as it is a product of physical forces. It is both. The belief in a goal of the universe, in laws and a process of advance toward the goal, is confirmed by observation and reasoning, but is not wholly their product. In this belief there are certain postulates of an underlying power, of an all-engrossing purpose, of an all-worthy end. To think of going no whither and of moving with no purpose, is as painful for reason as to think of coming no whence. We are urged onward to lay the ground of evolution in God, and to find the goal toward which the world is moving in his final purpose. The real being of God is required by thought to serve not only as the ground of all phenomena, but as the ground for the orders of phenomena and for all forms of human science which deal with the various orders. The being of God is the one rational explanation of nature, history, art, and politics, of the unfolding ethical and religious life of man, and of the relations which maintain themselves amongst all these complex interests and forms of growth. And not only our explanation, but our sole guarantee of the reality of human progress, is in the real being of God. To show this truth will occupy us in another Article. For the present it must suffice simply to state the great truth that, when we speak of a cosmos, of a course of history, of a destiny for the race, when we assert the improvability of man and the hope of improvement, when we trace a progress of the universe in rational form, from diffused gas through azoic rock to highly organized and reciprocally related forms of animal life, and trace a progress of history from rude, disjointed savagery to civilizations highly organized and organically bound together by commercial, social, political, and ethical ties, we make an attempt to understand the whole only so far as we posit for its ground and cause and goal-a Personal Absolute, who is the living God. As another has expressed the thought, "we