nto account
anything beyond our 'temporal' or secular interests. This, again, was
in fact admitted by Paley. His mode of escape from the dilemma is
familiar. The existence of a supreme artificer is inferred from the
interventions in the general order of nature. The existence of a moral
ruler, or the fact that the ruler approves morality, is inferred from
his interference by the particular manifestations of power which we
call miraculous. We know that actions will have other consequences
than those which can be inferred from our own experience, because some
two thousand years ago a Being appeared who could raise the dead and
heal the sick. If sufficient evidence of the fact be forthcoming, we
are entitled to say upon his authority that the wicked will be damned
and the virtuous go to heaven. Obedience to the law enforced by these
sanctions is obviously prudent, and constitutes the true _differentia_
of moral conduct. Virtue, according to the famous definition, is doing
good 'for the sake of everlasting happiness.' The downright bluntness
with which Paley announced these conclusions startled contemporaries,
and yet it must be admitted that they were a natural outcome of his
position.

In short, the theological position of the Paley school and the
Utilitarian position of 'Philip Beauchamp' start from the common
ground of experience. Religion means the knowledge of certain facts,
which are to be inferred from appropriate evidence. It does not modify
the whole system of thought, but simply adds certain corollaries; and
the whole question is whether the corollaries are or are not proved by
legitimate reasoning. Can we discover heaven and hell as we discovered
America? Can observation of nature reveal to us a supernatural world?'
The first difficulty is that the argument for natural theology has to
rest upon interference, not upon order, and therefore comes into
conflict with the first principles of scientific procedure. The Deity
is revealed not by the rational but by the arbitrary; and the more the
world is explained, the less the proof that he exists, because the
narrower the sphere of his action. Then, as such a Deity, even if
proved, is not proved to be benevolent or moral, we have to rely for
the moral element upon the evidence of 'miracles,' that is, again, of
certain interruptions of order. The scientific tendency more or less
embodied in Protestantism, so far as it appealed to reason or to
'private judgment,' had, mo