Again, we are to conceive of the Creator as possessing a belief in those principles of reason which he has implanted in our minds, and made our guide in all matters, both of temporal and religious concern.
Again, our experience of the nature and history of mind, leads to the inference that no being has existed from all eternity in solitude, but that there is more than one eternal, uncreated mind, and that all their powers of enjoyment from giving and receiving happiness in social relations have been in exercise from eternal ages. This is the just and natural deduction of reason and experience, as truly as the deduction that there is at least one eternal First Cause.
Again, all our experience of mind involves the idea of the mutual relation of minds. We perceive that minds are made to match to other minds, so that there [pg 101] can be no complete action of mind, according to its manifest design, except in relation to other beings. A mind can not love till there is another mind to call forth such emotion. A mind can not bring a tithe of its power into appropriate action except in a community of minds. The conception of a solitary being, with all the social powers and sympathies of the human mind infinitely enlarged, and yet without any sympathizing mind to match and meet them, involves the highest idea of unfitness and imperfection conceivable, while it is contrary to our uniform experience of the nature and history of mind.
It has been argued that the unity of design in the works of nature proves that there is but one creating mind. This is not so, for in all our experience of the creations of finite beings no great design was ever formed without a combination of minds, both to plan and to execute. The majority of minds in all ages, both heathen and Christian, have always conceived of the Creator as in some way existing so as to involve the ideas of plurality and of the love and communion of one mind with another.
And yet the unity and harmony of all created things as parts of one and the same design, teach a degree of unity in the authorship of the universe never known in the complex action of finite minds.
Thus a unity and plurality in the Creator of all things is educed by reason and experience from the works of nature.
Chapter XIX. The Nature of Mind Our Guide to the Moral Attributes of God.
Having employed the principles of common sense to gain a knowledge of the natural attributes of God, we are next to employ the same principles to gain his moral character; or those attributes which are exhibited in willing. In other words, we are to seek the character of God as expressed in his works or deeds.
In our experience of the moral character of minds in this world, we find that some of the highest grades as to intellect and susceptibilities, are lowest as to good-willing. How is it, then, with the highest mind of all? Does he so prefer evil to good, that he deliberately plans for the production of evil when he has power to produce happiness in its place? Or does he sometimes prefer evil and sometimes good, with the variable humors of the human race? Or does he always prefer good when it costs him no trouble or sacrifice, but never when it does? Or is he one who invariably chooses what is best for all, even when it involves painful sacrifices to himself?