a Power or
Being upon whom we depend for existence and well-being, and which Power
or Being "we call God." The feeling of obligation certainly indicates
the existence of a Being to whom we are accountable, and which Being Mr.
Mansel calls a "moral Deity." But in both instances the character, and
even the existence of God is "_assumed_" and we are entitled to ask on
what ground it is assumed. It will not be asserted that feeling alone
generates the idea, or that the feeling is transformed into idea without
the intervention of thought and reflection. Is there, then, a _logical_
connection between the feeling of dependence and of obligation, and the
idea of the Uncreated Mind, the Infinite First Cause, the Righteous
Governor of the world. Or is there a fixed and changeless co-relation
between _the feeling_ and the _idea_, so that when the feeling is
present, the idea also necessarily arises in the mind? This latter
opinion seems to be the doctrine of Mansel. We accept it as the
statement of a fact of consciousness, but we can not regard it as an
account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human mind. The idea of
God as the First Cause, the Infinite Mind, the Perfect Being, the
personal Lord and Lawgiver, the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the
world, is not a simple, primitive intuition of the mind. It is
manifestly a complex, concrete idea, and, as such, can not be developed
in consciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in a
simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous operation of the
whole mind. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the universe,
and the primitive intuitions of the reason,--a logical inference from
the facts of sense, consciousness, and reason. A philosophy of religion
which regards the feelings as supreme, and which brands the decisions of
reason as uncertain, and well-nigh valueless, necessarily degenerates
into mysticism--a mysticism "which pretends to elevate man directly to
God, and does not see that, in depriving reason of its power, it really
deprives man of that which enables him to know God, and puts him in a
just communication with God by the intermediary of eternal and infinite
truth."[65]

[Footnote 65: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 110.]

The religious sentiments in all minds, and in all ages, have resulted
from the union of _thought_ and _feeling_--the living and harmonious
relation of reason and sensibility; and a philosophy which