efore us is one which can
never be determined. The truth which is to be proved
is one which we already believe; and if, as we believe
also, our conviction of God's existence is, like that of
our own existence, intuitive and immediate, the grounds
of it can never adequately be analysed; we cannot say
exactly what they are, and therefore we cannot say
what they are not; whatever we receive intuitively, we
receive without proof; and stated as a naked proposition,
it must involve necessarily a petitio principii. We
have a right, however, to object at once to an
argument in which the conclusion is more obvious than the
premises; and if it lead on to other consequences
which we disapprove in themselves, we reject it without
difficulty or hesitation. We ourselves believe that God
is, because we experience the control of a "power"
which is stronger than we; and our instincts teach us
so much of the nature of that power as our own
relation to it requires us to know. God is the being to
whom our obedience is due; and the perfections which
we attribute to Him are those moral perfections which
are the proper object of our reverence. Strange to say,
the perfections of Spinoza, which appear so clear to
him, are without any moral character whatever; and
for men to speak of the justice of God, he tells us, is
but to see in Him a reflection of themselves: as if a
triangle were to conceive of Him as eminenter triangularis,
or a circle to give Him the property of circularity.

Having arrived, however, at existence, we soon find
ourselves among ideas, which at least are intelligible, if
the character of them is as far removed as before from
the circle of ordinary thought. Nothing exists except
substance, the attributes under which substance is ex
expressed, and the modes or affections of those attributes.
There is but one substance self-existent, eternal, necessary,
and that is the absolutely Infinite all-perfect Being.
Substance cannot produce substance; and, therefore,
there is no such thing as creation, and everything which
exists, is either an attribute of Him, or an affection of
some attribute of Him, modified in this manner or in
that. Beyond Him there is nothing, and nothing like
Him or equal to Him; He therefore alone in Himself
is absolutely free, uninfiuenced by anything, for nothing
is except Himself; and from Him and from His supreme
power, essence, intelligence (for all these words mean the
same thing) all things have