asmuch as man is a religious being, the instincts and emotions of
his nature constraining him to worship, there must also be implanted in
his rational nature some original _a priori_ ideas or laws of thought
which furnish the necessary cognition of the object of worship; that is,
some native, spontaneous cognition of God.

A mere blind impulse would not be adequate to guide man to the true end
and perfection of his being without rational ideas; a tendency or
appetency, without a revealed object, would be the mockery and misery of
his nature--an "ignis fatuus" perpetually alluring and forever deceiving
man.

That man has a native, spontaneous apperception of a God, in the true
import of that sacred name, has been denied by men of totally opposite
schools and tendencies of thought--by the Idealist and the Materialist;
by the Theologian and the Atheist. Though differing essentially in their
general principles and method, they are agreed in asserting that God is
absolutely "_the unknown_;" and that, so far as reason and logic are
concerned, man can not attain to any knowledge of the first principles
and causes of the universe, and, consequently, can not determine whether
the first principle or principles be intelligent or unintelligent,
personal or impersonal, finite or infinite, one or many righteous or
non-righteous, evil or good.

The various opponents of the doctrine that God can be cognized by human
reason may be classified as follows: I. _Those who assert that all human
knowledge is necessarily confined to the observation and classification
of phenomena in their orders of co-existence, succession, and
resemblance_. Man has no faculty for cognizing substances, causes,
forces, reasons, first principles--no power by which he can _know_ God.
This class may be again subdivided into--

1. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and classification
of _mental_ phenomena (_e. g_., Idealists like J. S. Mill).

2. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and classification
of _material_ phenomena (_e. g_., Materialists like Comte).

II. _The second class comprises all who admit that philosophic knowledge
is the knowledge of effects as dependent on causes, and of qualities as
inherent in substances; but at the same time assert that "all knowledge
is of the phenomenal_." Philosophy can never attain to a positive
knowledge of the First Cause. Of existence, absolutely and in itself, we
know nothing. The infini