I do not
think we need be concerned now with the repute or disrepute of
metaphysic generally, since we all are agreed that theism, or that
reality for which theism stands, is in the super-sensible,
super-experiential world, and therefore if theism is an implication of
ethics at all, it is, of course, a metaphysical one. As to theism
itself, things are not quite so clear, for the term covers, or may be
made to cover, a number of philosophic systems which are not in harmony
with one another. Thus the theism of the Hebrew Scriptures would
possibly be atheism to Hegel, while the great idealist's position might
be pantheism or worse to a High Church curate. To us theism means that
at the ground of being, at the heart of existence, there is a
self-subsistent reality which we call by the highest name we know,
_viz._, reason or mind. "Before the chaos that preceded the birth of
the heavens and the earth one only being existed, immense, silent,
immovable, yet incessantly active; that being is the mother of the
universe. I know not how this being is named, but I designate it by
the word 'reason'." [1] Absolute, unconditioned intelligence is the
_Theos_ we acknowledge. This is the formulary of our philosophical
creed, and as Luther fastened his forty theses to the doors of the
Wuertemburg Cathedral, I affix my two humble propositions to the postern
of the ethical church, namely, first, that "In the beginning was Mind,"
and next, that the moral law is the highest expression of that Mind.
And, moreover, that as the mind in man is so ordered as to naturally
proceed from the more known to the less known, from the ascertained
fact of the moral law, we ascend to the source of the moral law, which,
like all things, takes its rise in the _apeiron_, the Boundless of
Anaximander, the Infinite of Mr. Spencer. Theism, then, as thus
explained, one discerns as an implication of the indisputable fact of
morality, of the sovereignty of ethic, of the indestructible supremacy
of conscience.

And here one may be allowed to quote a singularly luminous passage from
the _Cours d'Histoire de la Philosophic Morale en 18eme Siecle_ of
Victor Cousin, p. 318. "Kant remarks at this point," he says, "that we
have no right to derive our moral ideas from the idea of God, because
it is precisely from the moral ideas themselves that we are led to
recognise a Supreme Being, the personification of absolute
righteousness. Consequently, no-one may look upo