If the views now advanced are presentations of truth, a consistent rationalism must attribute "consciousness to God." We are always conscious of "limitation and change," because partiality and growth are organic with us. But we can perceive no peculiarity in consciousness, which should produce such an effect. On the contrary we see, that if a person has little knowledge, he will be conscious of so much and no more. And if a person has great capabilities, and corresponding information, he is conscious of just so much. Whence, it appears, that the "limitation and change" spring from the nature of the constitution, and not from the consciousness. If, then, there should be one Person who possessed the sum of all excellencies, there could arise no reason from consciousness why he should be conscious thereof.
Mr. Mansel names as the "second characteristic of Consciousness, that it is only possible in the form of a relation. There must be a Subject, or person conscious, and an Object or thing of which he is conscious." This utterance, taken in the sense which Mr. Mansel wishes to convey, involves the denial of consciousness to God. But upon the ground that the subject and object in the Deity are always identical the difficulty vanishes. But how can man be "conscious of the Absolute?" If by this is meant, have an exhaustive comprehension of the absolute Person, the experience is manifestly impossible. But man may have a certain knowledge, that such Person is without knowing in all respects what he is, just as a child may know that an apple is, without knowing what it is. Again Mr. Mansel uses the terms absolute and infinite to represent a simple unanalyzable Being. In this he is guilty of personifying an abstract term, and then reasoning with regard to the Being as he would with regard to the term. Absoluteness is a simple unanalyzable idea, but it is not God; it is only one quality of God. So with infinity. God is universal complexity; and to reason of him as unanalyzable simplicity is as absurd as to select the color of the apple's skin, and call that the apple, and then reason from it about the apple. So, then, though man cannot comprehend the absolute Person as such, he has a positive idea of absoluteness, and a positive knowledge that the Being is who is thus qualified. Upon the subsequent question respecting the partiality of our knowledge of the infinite and absolute Person, a remark made above may be repeated and amplified. We may have a true, clear, thorough knowledge that he exists without having an exhaustive knowledge of what he is. The former is necessary to us; the latter impossible. So, too, the knowledge by us, of any a priori law, will be exhaustive. Yet while we know that it must be such, and not otherwise, it neither follows that we know all other a priori laws, nor that we know all the exemplifications of this one. And since, as we have heretofore seen, neither absoluteness nor infinity relate to number, and God is not material substance that can be broken into "parts," but an organized Spirit, we see that we may consider the elements of his organization in their logical order; and, remembering that absoluteness and infinity as qualities pervade all, we may examine his nature and attributes without impiety.
Mr. Mansel says further: "But in truth it is obvious, on a moment's reflection, that neither the Absolute nor the Infinite can be represented in the form of a whole composed of parts." This is tantamount to saying, the spiritual cannot be represented under the form of the material—a truth so evident as hardly to need so formal a statement. But what the Divine means is, that that Being cannot be known as having qualities and attributes which may be distinguished in and from himself; which is an error. God is infinite. So is his Knowledge, his Wisdom, his Holiness, his Love, &c. Yet these are distinguished from each other, and from him. All this is consistent, because infinity is quality, and permeates them all; and not amount, which jumbles them all into a confused, indistinguishable mass.
In speaking of "human consciousness" as "necessarily subject to the law of Time," Mr. Mansel says, "Every object of whose existence we can be in any way conscious is necessarily apprehended by us as succeeding in time to some former object of consciousness, and as itself occupying a certain portion of time." In so far as there is here expressed the law of created beings, under which they must see objects, the remark is true. But when Mr. Mansel proceeds further, and concludes that, because we are under limitation in seeing the object, it is under the same limitation, so far as we apprehend it in being seen, he asserts what is a psychological error. To show this, take the mathematical axiom, "Things which are equal to the same things, are equal to one another." Except under the conditions of Time, we cannot see this, that is, we do, must, occupy a time in observing it. But do we see that the axiom is under any condition of Time? By no means. We see, directly, that it is, must be, true, and that in itself it has no relation to Time. It is thus absolutely true; and as one of the ideas of the infinite and absolute Person, it possesses these his qualities. We have, then, a faculty, the Reason, which, while it sees its objects in succession, and so under the law of Time, also sees that those objects, whether ideas, or that Being to whom all ideas belong, are, in themselves, out of all relation to Time. Thus is the created spiritual person endowed; thus is he like God; thus does he know "the Infinite." Hence, "the command, so often urged upon man by philosophers and theologians, 'In contemplating God, transcend time,'" means, "In all your reflections upon God, behold him in his true aspect, in the reason-idea, as out of all relation." It is true that "to know the infinite" exhaustively, "the human mind must itself be infinite." But this knowledge is not required of that mind. Only that knowledge is required which is possible, viz., that the Deity is, and what he is, in so far as we are in his image.
Again; personality is not "essentially a limitation and a relation," in the sense that it necessarily detracts aught from any being who possesses it. It rather adds,—is, indeed, a pure addition. We appear to ourselves as limited and related, not because of our personality, but because of our finiteness as quality in the personality.
Hence we not only see no reason why the complete and universal Spirit should not have personality, but we see that if he was destitute of it, he must possess a lower form of being,—since this is the highest possible form,—which would be an undoubted limitation; or, in other words, we see that he must be a Person. In what Mr. Mansel subsequently says upon this subject, he presents arguments for the personality of God so strong, that one is bewildered with the question, "How could he escape the conviction which they awaken? How could he reject the cry of his spiritual nature, and accept the barren contradictions of his lower mind?" Let us note a few sentences. "It is by consciousness alone that we know that God exists, or that we are able to offer him any service. It is only by conceiving Him as a Conscious Being, that we can stand in any religious relation to Him at all,—that we can form such a representation of Him as is demanded by our spiritual wants, insufficient though it be to satisfy our intellectual curiosity." "Personality comprises all that we know of that which exists; relation to personality comprises all that we know of that which seems to exist. And when, from the little world of man's consciousness and its objects, we would lift up our eyes to the inexhaustible universe beyond, and ask to whom all this is related, the highest existence is still the highest personality, and the Source of all Being reveals Himself by His name, 'I AM.'" "It is our duty, then, to think of God as personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite." We may at this point quote with profit the words of that Book whose authority Mr. Mansel, without doubt, most heartily acknowledges. "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." "I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth." Either God is personal or he is not. If he is, then all that we claim is conceded. If he is not personal, and "it is our duty to think" of him as personal, then it is our duty to think and believe a falsehood. This no man, at least neither Mr. Mansel nor any other enlightened man, can bring his mind to accept as a moral law. The soul instinctively asserts that obligation lies parallel with truth, and "that no lie is of the truth." So, then, there can be no duty except where truth is. And the converse may also be accepted, viz.: Where an enlightened sense of duty is, there is truth. When, therefore, so learned and truly spiritual a man as Mr. Mansel asserts "that it is our duty to think God personal, and believe him infinite," we unhesitatingly accept it as the utterance of a great fundamental truth in that spiritual realm which is the highest realm of being, and so, as one of the highest truths, and with it we accept all its logical consequences. It is a safe rule anywhere, that if two mental operations seem to clash, and one must be rejected, man should cling to, and trust in the higher—the teaching of the nobler nature. Thus will we do, and from the Divine's own ground will we see the destruction of his philosophy. "It is our duty to think of God as personal," because he is personal; and we know that he is personal because it is our duty to think him so. We need pay no regard to the perplexities of the Understanding. We soar with the eagle above the clouds, and float ever in the light of the Sun. The teachings of the Moral Sense are far more sure, safe, and satisfactory than any discursions of the lower faculty. Therefore it is man's wisdom, in all perplexity to heed the cry of his highest nature, and determine to stand on its teachings, as his highest knowledge, interpret all utterances by this, and reject all which contradict it. At the least, the declaration of this faculty is as valid as that of the lower, and is to be more trusted in every disagreement, because higher. Still further, no man would believe that God, in the most solemn, yea, awful moment of his Self-revelation, would declare a lie. The bare thought, fully formed, horrifies the soul as a blasphemy of the damned. Yet, in that supreme act, in the solitude of the Sinaitic wilderness, to one of the greatest, one of the profoundest, most devout of men, He revealed Himself by the pregnant words, "I AM": the most positive, the most unquestionable form in which He could utter the fact of His personality. This, then, and all that is involved in it, we accept as truth; and all perplexities must be interpreted by this surety.
In summing up the results to which an examination of the facts of consciousness conducted him, Mr. Mansel utters the following psychological error: "But a limit is necessarily conceived as a relation between something within and something without itself; and the consciousness of a limit of thought implies, though it does not directly present to us, the existence of something of which we do not and cannot think." Not so; for a limit may be seen to be wholly within the being to whom it belongs, and so not to be "a relation between something within and something without itself." This is precisely the case with the Deity. All relations and limits spring from within him, and there is nothing "without" to establish the relation claimed. This absence of all limit from without is rudely expressed in such common phrases as this: "It must be so in the nature of things." This "nature of things" is, in philosophical language, the system of a priori laws of the Universe, and these are necessary ideas in the Divine Reason. It appears, then, that what must be in the nature of things, finds its limits wholly within, and its relations established by the Deity.
With these remarks the author would close his criticism upon Mr. Mansel's book. We start from entirely different bases, and these two systems logically follow from their foundations. If Sir William Hamilton is right in his psychology, his follower is unquestionably right in his deductions. But if that psychology is partial, if besides the Understanding there is the Reason, if above the judgment stands the intuition, giving the final standard by which to measure that judgment, then is the philosophical system of the Divine utterly fallacious. The establishment of the validity of the Pure Reason is the annihilation of "the Philosophy of the Unconditioned." On the ground which the author has adopted, it is seen that "God is a spirit," infinite, absolute, self-conscious, personal; and a consistent interpretation of these terms has been given. We have found that certain objects may be seen as out of all relation, plurality, difference, or likeness. Consciousness and personality have also been found to involve no limit, in the proper sense of that term. On the contrary, the one was ascertained to be the light in which any or all objects might be seen under conditions of Time, or at once; and that this seeing was according to the capacity with which the being was endowed, and was not determined by any peculiarity of the consciousness; while the other appeared to be the highest possible form of existence, and that also in which God had revealed himself. From such a ground it is possible to go forward and construct a Rational Theology which shall verify by Reason the teachings of the Bible.