The _a priori_ arguments have a value independent of their truth and of their power to produce conviction. True or false, persuasive or merely perplexing, they are admirable means of disciplining the mind distinctly to apprehend certain ideas which experience cannot yield, yet which must be comprehended in any worthy view taken of God. They help us steadily to contemplate and patiently to consider such abstract and difficult thoughts as those of being, absolute being, necessary being, cause, substance, perfection, infinity, eternity, &c.; and this is a service so great, that it may safely be said--as some writer whose name I cannot recall has said--that they will never be despised so long as speculative thinking is held in repute.
While believing that several of these arguments on the whole accomplish what they undertake, I am not prepared to maintain that any of them are faultless or even conclusive throughout. They are all, probably, much too formal and elaborate, so far as any directly practical purpose is concerned. It ought to be constantly kept in view that they presuppose an immediate apprehension of the infinite, and that their value consists entirely in establishing that that apprehension implies the reality and presence of God. The simplest mode of doing this must be the best. It may be thought that no reasoning at all is needed; that the intuition does not require to be supplemented by any inference; that if the infinite be apprehended, the living God must be self-evidently present to the human mind. But this is plainly a hasty view. Few atheists will deny that something is infinite, or that they immediately apprehend various aspects of infinity. What they refuse to acknowledge is, that the apprehension of the infinite implies more than the boundlessness of space, the eternity of time, and the self-existence of matter. There is certainly some reasoning needed in order to show that this interpretation of the intuition is inadequate. But such reasoning cannot be too direct, for otherwise the function of the intuition is almost certain to be obscured, and argument is almost certain to be credited with accomplishing far more than it really effects.
According to the view of the theistic argumentation which has been given in the present course of lectures, all that is now necessary to complete the theistic proof is very simple indeed. The universe has been shown to have an inconceivably powerful and intelligent cause, a Supreme Creator, who has dealt bountifully with all His creatures, who has given to men a moral law, and who has abundantly manifested in history that He loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. We are further conscious of having ideas or intuitions of infinity, eternity, necessary existence, and perfection. We may dispute as to whence and how we have got them, but we cannot deny that we possess them. Were any person, for example, to affirm that he did not believe that there is a self-existent or necessary being--a being which derived its existence from no other and depends upon no other but is what it is in and of itself alone--we should be entitled to tell him either that he did not know the meaning of what he said, or that he did not himself believe what he said. But if we undoubtedly possess these ideas, they must, unless they are wholly delusive--which is what we are unable to conceive--be predicable of some being. The sole question for us is, Of what being? And the whole of our previous argumentation has shut us up to one answer. It must be, Of Him who has been proved to be the First Cause of all things--the Source of all the power, wisdom, and goodness displayed in the universe. It cannot be the universe itself, for that has been shown to be but an effect--to have before and behind it a Mind, a Person. It cannot be ourselves or anything to which our senses can reach, seeing that we and they are finite, contingent, and imperfect. The author of the universe alone--the Father of our spirits, and the Giver of every good and perfect gift--can be uncreated and unconditioned, infinite and perfect.
