octrine of the Infinite, or even
responsible for the full import of his words, we may quote his
remarkable utterances on this subject: "The Divinity is in part
concealed and in part revealed. He is at once known and unknown. But the
last and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar 'to
the unknown God.' In this consummation nature and religion, Paganism and
Christianity, are at one."[111]

[Footnote 110: "Lectures," vol. i. p. 104.]

[Footnote 111: "Discussions on Philosophy," p. 23.]

When, therefore, the apostle affirms that while the Athenians worshipped
the God whom he proclaimed they "knew him not," we can not understand
him as saying they were destitute of all faith in the being of God, and
of all ideas of his real character. Because for him to have asserted
they had _no_ knowledge of God would not only have been contrary to all
the facts of the case, but also an utter contradiction of all his
settled convictions and his recorded opinions. There is not in modern
times a more earnest asserter of the doctrine that the human mind has an
intuitive cognition of God, and that the external world reveals God to
man. There is a passage in his letter to the Romans which is justly
entitled to stand at the head of all discourses on "natural theology,"
Rom. i. 19-21. Speaking of the heathen world, who had not been favored,
as the Jews, with a verbal revelation, he says, "That which may be known
of God is manifest _in_ them," that is, in the constitution and laws of
their spiritual nature, "for God hath showed it unto them" in the voice
of reason and of conscience, so that in the instincts of our hearts, in
the elements of our moral nature, in the ideas and laws of our reason,
we are taught the being of a God. These are the subjective teachings of
the human soul.

Not only is the being of God revealed to man in the constitution and
laws of his rational and moral nature, but God is also manifested to us
objectively in the realm of things around us; therefore Paul adds, "The
invisible things of him, even his eternal power and Godhead, from the
creation are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made." The world of sense, therefore, discloses the being and
perfections of God. The invisible attributes of God are made apparent by
the things that are visible. Forth out of nature, as the product of the
Divine Mind, the supernatural shines. The forces, laws, and harmonies of
the universe are indices