27 
must needs have minute knowledge of the inner life of each con- 
stituent member of the whole community. For if not, injustice 
and wrong may be done, — in other words, violence to the 
inner nature of the responsible agent ; or else the inner rela- 
tion of the responsible agent to the “ true-always ” must be set 
aside, and all deontology denied. That such a Supreme 
governing and unerring power is absolutely a necessity of 
finite responsible agency, and required by all the facts, is a 
position from which no ingenuity can escape ; and which no 
sophistry or reluctance of faith can persuade the world to 
forego. Deny all accountability — all praise and blame — all 
personal agency as to various details — and all sameness of 
relation of the conscious individual to the “ true-always 33 ; 
or else acknowledge that a community of such responsible 
agents must be always ordered and maintained in action by 
a governing Power, whose nature is in harmony with necessary 
or absolute goodness, which is ff true-always,” and The only al 
administers these laws equitably in all cases of temative a de- 
real responsibility. There is no alternative, we maloffactg - 
repeat, but this : disclaim all honour and all shame ; resist all 
the facts of human nature's accountable existence here; or 
acknowledge a Supreme Power, which knows the whole 
responsible community, and governs it. 
49. This is far more than a logical inference from the facts 
of human nature— (though no reasonable being can deny any 
exact logical inference) ; it is a Fact recognized by each finite 
moral agent on countless occasions. Take, for example, the 
dread of retribution for wrong that has been done ; it is quite 
distinct from, though often coincident with, dread The indiyi . 
of the detection and punishment of human law ; for dnai respon- 
men will often give themselves up to legal punish- a sense of a 
ment in the hope of satisfying the Nemesis, as the 
heathen said, which haunts the wrong-doer. This is no super- 
stition merely, (though as a fact it would not, even then, be 
without meaning ) ; it cannot be got rid of by alleging its 
partial character in different individuals ; for we all have too 
much sympathy with it to suppose that it is not part of our 
nature. “ Whom vengeance suffereth not to live,” is a well- 
known line marking a real trait in man — his sense that he is 
under a higher Pule. The question that must here be met is 
one of the most fundamental — the most vital— that can be 
entertained. Many who may have followed us thus far, will 
attempt to pause here, and assert for the Supreme Governing 
Power an Impersonal Existence only, as what is called a self- 
acting Law of the universe. 
50. The primary difficulty in the way of so Pantheistic a view 
