sis as
tradition is admitted, even by Mr. Watson, to be.

The human mind needs the idea of God to satisfy its deep moral
necessities, and to harmonize all its powers. The perfection of humanity
can never be secured, the destination of humanity can never be achieved,
the purpose of God in the existence of humanity can never be
accomplished, without the idea of God, and of the relation of man to
God, being present to the human mind. Society needs the idea of a
Supreme Ruler as the foundation of law and government, and as the basis
of social order. Without it, these can not be, or be conserved.
Intellectual creatureship, social order, human progress, are
inconceivable and impossible without the idea of God, and of
accountability to God. Now that truths so fundamental should, to the
masses of men, rest on tradition _alone_, is incredible. Is there no
known and accessible God to the outlying millions of our race who, in
consequence of the circumstances of birth and education, which are
beyond their control, have had no access to an oral revelation, and
among whom the dim shadowy rays of an ancient tradition have long ago
expired? Are the eight hundred millions of our race upon whom the light
of Christianity has not shone unvisited by the common Father of our
race? Has the universal Father left his "own offspring" without a single
native power of recognizing the existence of the Divine Parent, and
abandoned them to solitary and dreary orphanage? Could not he who gave
to matter its properties and laws,--the properties and laws through
whose operation he is working out his own purposes in the realm of
nature,--could not he have also given to mind ideas and principles
which, logically developed, would lead to recognition of a God, and of
our duty to God, and, by these ideas and principles, have wrought out
his sublime purposes in the realm of mind? Could not he who gave to man
the appetency for food, and implanted in his nature the social instincts
to preserve his physical being, have implanted in his heart a "feeling
after God," and an instinct to worship God in order to the conservation
of his spiritual being? How otherwise can we affirm the responsibility
and accountability of all the race before God? Those theologians who are
so earnest in the assertion that God has not endowed man with the native
power of attaining the knowledge of God can not, on any principle of
equity, show how the heathen are "without excuse" when, in i