dely
diffused intuitions of God. The Missionary, from the days of St. Paul at
Athens down to the present, has to begin by arguing with his opponents in
favour of Theism, and then to go on to argue from Theism to Christianity.
I do not deny--on the contrary I strongly contend--that the rational
considerations which lead up to Monotheism are so manifold, and lie so
near at hand, that at a certain stage of mental development we find that
belief independently asserting itself with more or less fullness in
widely distant regions of time and space; while traces of it are found
almost everywhere--even among savages--side by side with other and
inconsistent beliefs. But even among theistic nations an immediate
knowledge of God is claimed by very few. If there is a tendency on the
part of the more strongly religious minds to claim it, it is explicitly
disclaimed by others--by most of the great Schoolmen, and in modern times
by profoundly religious minds such as Newman or Martineau. Its existence
is in fact denied by most of the great theological systems--Catholic,
Protestant, Anglican. Theologians always begin by arguing in favour of
the existence of God. And even among the religious minds without
philosophical training which do claim such immediate knowledge, their
creed is most often due (as is obvious to the outside observer) to the
influence of environment, of education, of social {109} tradition. For
the religious person who claims such knowledge of God does not generally
stop at the bare affirmation of God's existence: he goes on to claim an
immediate knowledge of all sorts of other things--ideas clearly derived
from the traditional teaching of his religious community. The Protestant
of a certain type will claim immediate consciousness of ideas about the
forgiveness of sins which are palpably due to the teaching of Luther or
St. Augustine, and to the influence of this or that preacher who has
transmitted those ideas to him or to his mother: while the Catholic,
though his training discourages such claims, will sometimes see visions
which convey to him an immediate assurance of the truth of the Immaculate
Conception. Even among Anglicans we find educated men who claim to know
by immediate intuition the truth of historical facts alleged to have
occurred in the first century, or dogmatic truths such as the complicated
niceties of the Athanasian Creed. These claims to immediate insight thus
refute themselves by the inco