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believers in the existence of a moral governor of the world. 
This belief is partly founded on their own individual ex- 
perience. They see that a higher wisdom than their own has 
been overruling their life, and find abundant reason for grati- 
tude to that superintending providence for its fostering care. 
Many things which they had ignorantly desired have been 
withheld, and it is only after the lapse of years that they have 
discerned the reason. And thus the doctrine which they 
accepted upon trust in their earlier years has become the 
conviction of their matured experience. They call the Being 
in whose existence they believe a Personal God, not because 
they fully understand in every respect the way in which what 
we call Personality can be predicated of God, but because it 
is inferred from “ manifestations ” of the Unseen, which 
are “ knowably like 33 to what we call “ personality 33 in man.* 
There are certain phenomena in the visible world from which 
it appears reasonable to infer the existence of a Being Who 
exercises a kindly supervision over, — Who keeps up a 
friendly connexion with, — human beings. The word “ per- 
sonality 33 is used to express this “ knowable relation.^ If 
it be metaphysically inadequate to express it, that need not 
trouble us. For every word we use is, as we have seen, meta- 
physically inadequate to express the idea it seeks to convey. 
And yet we do not cease to think, nor yet to speak, in matters 
of ordinary life. There is no more reason why we should 
cease to speak or think of God. 
33. So far we have confined ourselves to Natural Religion. 
Now we have one word to say for Christianity. If there be 
one passion more intense than another with which humanity 
is endowed, it is the desire to know. And this passion is at 
its highest in reference to the problems of the future. The 
early Christian writers tell us how intense this craving was. 
The author of the Clementines depicts his hero as wasting 
away with his passionate desire to know something definite 
concerning the life beyond. Justin Martyr tells us how he 
rushed from teacher to teacher, but found that none but 
Christ could satisfy his longings. Can we suppose that the 
Creator of all has implanted this craving for no purpose but 
* Dean Mans el tells us that “ personality implies limitation,” and that 
God is the unlimited. But we have seen that Kevelation represents God as 
essentially limited in certain directions. Infinitely wise and good of course 
He is. But these very attributes limit His power to become other than wise 
and good. Therefore, even if personality does imply limitations, it is not on 
that account inconsistent with the idea of God. And so disappears an 
argument which has been freely employed of late. 
VOL. XVIT. K 
