The Grounds of Theistic And Christian Belief

ort. It is in sense-perception that external objects are brought directly to our knowledge. Through sensations compared and combined by reason, we perceive outward things in their qualities and relations. There are perceptions of the spirit as well as of sense. The being whom we call God may, in like manner, come in contact with the soul. As the soul, on the basis of sensations, posits the outer world of sense, so, on the basis of analogous inward experiences, it posits God. The inward feelings, yearnings, aspirations, which are the ground of the spiritual perception, are not continuous, as in the perceptions of matter: they vary in liveliness ; they are contingent, in a remarkable degree, on character. Hence religious faith has not the clearness, the uniform and abiding character, which belongs to our recognition of outward things.1 Religion is communion with God. If we look attentively at religion in its ripe form, ? as, for example, we find it expressing itself in the Psalms of the Old Testament,? we shall .get some help towards discerning the elements that compose it, and the sources within man out of which it springs. Such a study suggests that it is through the feeling of dependence and the feeling of obligation that theexistence of a Supreme Being in whom we live, and to whose law we are subject, is revealed to the soul, and that intimately connected with the recognition of this being is a native tendency to rest upon and hold converse with Him in whom w...