it, the same waters in ceaseless flow. Floating on the river itself we never reach a supernatural source. The most we

can do is to discover some loss of volume and breadth as we press upward, and much of this even, science shows to be a deceptive transfer and modification of forces. The Nile, unexplored, may be thought to descend from heaven, or gush in full volume from the earth; but exploration divests it of its mythical character, and leaves it like the other rivers of the world.

The simple notion, then, of cause and effect prompts scientific inquiry, but cannot lift us beyond the conditions of such inquiry the steady flow of natural forces. If points of commencement are thus really reached, they are only points of arrest, and we must have another idea, another clew given by the rational mind, before we can gather up and unitè all these lines of force in the hand of the Almighty.

But not only does each cause imply a previous one, but also its perfect equality with the effect. We cannot infer more in the cause than is revealed in the effect. The conception requires the perfect equality of the two, and we break the line of argument as much by going beyond the just inference, and finding more in the cause than we have found in the effect, as we should by falling short of it, and accepting the phenomena without a cause, or with a partial cause incapable of their production. This essential nature of the idea cannot be disregarded or transcended in reasoning from effect to cause without rendering the conclusion invalid by the virtual invalidation of the idea on which it rests. The infinite attributes of God cannot, therefore, by mere causation, be proved from finite effects, however great, even if we are to allow the sudden arrest in a personal being of the argument by which we ascend.

In reasoning from the universe as a finite effect to the Creator as an infinite cause, we do not merely enlarge the cause; we increase it by that unmeasured quantity which lies between the largest finite product and infinite power. But it may be asked: Can we not infer the presence of more

power in a free agent than the work before us actually requires? Doubtless; but not under the notion of cause and effect. On the other hand, so far as this idea has been allowed to enter the domain of liberty, and been brought to explain human action, that action has been looked on as the only possible result of the conditions under which it has occurred, and thus as a complete exponent of the forces then and there present. We have, by this reasoning, been cut off from that amplification of the power of a personal agent by which we infer the possibility of other and more products of action than those actually exhibited. With this notion as the basis of reasoning, we are only able to say of the moral agent as we may of the physical cause, that under other circumstances it might exhibit different results.

The weakness of this proof of a Divine Being, its want of precision, are seen in the language it employs. It infers from certain effects a cause, from this cause a second cause, till, weary of pursuing the inference, it cuts it short in what it calls a first cause, which, taken as a true cause with no further explanation, is a contradiction in terms-an overthrow and denial of the process by which it itself has been reached. There can be no first cause, since on the level of cause and effect merely every cause must itself be an effect. These words are applicable to the same thing viewed in different relations, as connected upward or downward. That which is strictly first must be more than a cause. To suddenly turn a cause into a first cause, is to make of it instantly, by a mere trick of words, a new and transcendent thing—is to call the link of a chain a staple, and then suspend from it the otherwise interminable progression. The question reverts: How came our last link to be a staple? How can we, passfrom link to link, reasoning that one link always implies another, yet find so opportunely a support of a new and dif ferent kind on which to hang them all. The necessity, we understand, but not the method by which it is met. This seems to us a slip of the argument. We are carried into the obscure distance, and a new idea suddenly passed upon us as

if it were in lawful continuation of the process thus far pursued. There is due, under the argument, the thousandth or ten thousandth cause, and there is adroitly slipped in its place the first-cause, a totally distinct idea, transcendent in all its proportions. If a first-cause means a cause, our argument has not reached its conclusion; if it means an infinite God, we have smuggled in the notion by giving it a false and inferior label. The Creator thus comes to his own universe only as part and parcel of it.

There frequently arises in connection with this argument thus handled a fatal degradation of Deity. The adjective "first," instead of lifting the notion of a cause up to the true throne of the Infinite, is dragged down by it to some intermediate ground: God ceases to be above the universe, and the entire source of it. Thus Plato could believe, and philosophers of our own day can believe, in God and also in the eternity of matter-in this most weighty chain of causes as not lodged in his hand. The notion of a Deity is called in to explain the order and beauty of the universe, and not its existence. True to this line of argument, the cause is measured by the effect, and God is left a limited agent, working in and on that which he has not created.

So, too, we hear those who would be startled at the assertion of the independent existence of matter, speaking of a nature of things as limiting God's action, and constituting laws external to him; of geometric principles and of right as assigning superior rules to his rational and moral nature. This conception is that of a necessary framework of order found by Deity, anticipating and giving conditions to his action. Thus God ceases again to be the Absolute, in himself the complete and only source alike of things, events, and their rational forms. God as the supreme, uncreated reason finds every law of thought, of rational action in himself, and under these laws of his own mind, as frameworks of order, he constructs a universe. That nature of things which we find, which rules our thoughts and actions, is to God his own nature. Geometric principles arising from the nature of

thought, of mind, do not flow in upon God from matter, but out from God on matter, to and through his universe, receiving its fixed, necessary constitution from those rational powers which shaped it. The immutable foundations of nature are not laid in itself, but rest back on the rock-the Rock of Ages. Mind is the source of law to nature, not nature to mind.

For these two reasons, then, the idea of cause is not the ground of a satisfactory argument for the existence of God. There is an illegitimate substitution of one idea for anothera first-cause for a cause; and there is an inference to a cause broader than the entire aggregate of effects. The notion of cause has an exceedingly important and definite work to do, and it is, therefore, the more liable to be carried beyond its own province. Introduced into the realm of freedom, of spiritual action, it has brought with it nothing but confusion. Motives are not causes, nor are volitions effects. Till the first material result in nerve and muscle is reached, we have no cause proper; and this cause we at once find true to the notion, determining the effects which follow it, and determined by the conditions which precede it. Choice explains volition by its own independent, explanatory powers, with no aid whatsoever derived from the exposition of effects by their appropriate causes. So, too, if we go with the simple idea of cause, ranging up and down the material universe, outside that universe in search of a Creator, we shall fail, either by overpassing our premises in our conclusions, or by dragging down our conclusions, in whole or in part, to our premises, putting them under the fatal lock of our materialistic reasonings.

What, then, is not merely the practically just, but the theoretically correct, the safe form of argument for the existence of God? Explanation in all cases arises under some idea native to the mind. The impulse to know in any given case comes from the presence of an idea; and the satisfaction of knowing, from including the phenomena under the intuitive idea appropriate to them. An event is mentioned in our hearing; we find ourselves prompted to make several in

quiries concerning it. Under the idea of time we wish to know when it occurred; under that of space, where it happened; and under that of cause, the relation in which it stood to previous events. The impulse to inquire arises from these ideas, and the pleasure of knowledge is due to the reference of the facts in period, place, and causation under them. The rumor of a crime agitates the popular mind. Curiosity is put at rest by learning that it was committed yesterday, at nine o'clock in the evening, in a designated house in Ann Street, Boston, by a specified person, for reasons given. I see one carried by wounded, and am told that he was injured by the fall of a brick in passing from Washington to Court Street. Curiosity is again satisfied. The loosened brick is referable to the gale of wind, while the blowing of the wind is one of those familiar facts which I am content to leave unexplained, or am able to refer with more or less distinctness to general laws.

Other notions furnish kindred explanations; that of freedom to a capricious choice; that of beauty to the admiration bestowed; that of right, to the sense of obligation expressed and to the self-denial incurred.

Thus each original, regulative idea brings to some class of facts a solution in which the mind rests, and without which it will not rest. Among these ideas is that of the Infinite, in its full, personal form of unmeasured wisdom and perfect. power of the Almighty. That such a notion is present to the mind, we need no other proof than the vexation and denial it has brought to philosophy. It has been to all sensational, empirical schools of thought a Bancho's ghost, that would not down; that has disappeared at one point only to reappear at another with new alarm and terror; that has been denied to philosophy to be reclaimed for faith, and has vexed and worried the intellectual eye with proportions it could not measure, and yet with a substance and presence it could not dispute. This veritable idea, appearing ever in the experience of man, often, indeed, under limitations too narrow, in vague, disguised semblance, rather than in full