Raymond of Sebonde, in a work which I have previously had occasion to mention, was perhaps the first to present it in a more artificial form. He argues thus: Man is a responsible being who can neither reward nor punish himself, and who must consequently be under a superior being who will reward and punish him, unless his life is to be regarded as vain and purposeless—unless even the whole of external nature, which is subject to man and exists for his sake, is to be pronounced aimless and useless. External nature, however, is seen to be throughout orderly and harmonious; how can we suppose the moral world to be disorderly and chaotic? As the eye corresponds to things visible, the ear to things audible, the reason to things intelligible, so conscience must correspond to a judgment which implies some one to pronounce it, and to a retribution which implies some one to inflict it. But this some one must be absolutely just; he must be omniscient, as possessing a perfect knowledge of all human actions, and a thorough insight into their moral character; omnipotent, to execute his judgments; and, in a word, must be the most perfect of all beings—i.e., God.
Kant's argument is thus summarised by the Archbishop of York: "The highest good of man consists of two parts, the greatest possible morality and happiness. The former is the demand of his spiritual, the latter of his animal nature. The former only, his morality, is within his own power; and while, by persevering virtue, he makes this his personal character, he is often compelled to sacrifice his happiness. But since the desire of happiness is neither irrational nor unnatural, he justly concludes either that there is a Supreme Being who will so guide the course of things (the natural world, not of itself subject to moral laws) as to render his holiness and happiness equal, or that the dictates of his conscience are unjust and irrational. But the latter supposition is morally impossible; and he is compelled, therefore, to receive the former as true."
Akin to this argument are those which are based on man's desire of good. Proclus, in his 'Theology of Plato,' argues to the following effect: All beings desire the good; but this good cannot be identical with the beings which desire it, for then these beings would be themselves the good, and would not desire what they already possessed. The good is antecedent, therefore, to all the beings who desire it. Since the time of Proclus to the present many have argued that there must be a God because the heart demands one to satisfy its desire of love, or holiness, or happiness; few, perhaps, have done so with more ingenuity of logic or fervour of belief than John Norris in "Contemplation and Love, or the Methodical Ascent of the Soul to God by steps of Meditation," and in "An Idea of Happiness" ('Collection of Miscellanies').
A contemporary theologian, Principal Pirie of Aberdeen, has laid great stress on an argument which we may assign to this class. "No argument," he says, "can be valid which founds on innate ideas, or which embraces considerations so entirely beyond the range of human apprehension that we cannot positively be assured whether they be true or false. Yet we have no hesitation in saying that there is an argument a priori for the existence and attributes of a God, which is involved in the very nature of our feelings, and which therefore tells upon the faith of the whole human race, even when they are altogether ignorant of it logically, as existing in the form of a proposition. It makes no appeal, however, to profound metaphysical speculations, and is consequently plain and intelligible to any one capable of exercising reason at all. It rests on the principle which both our feelings and our experience demonstrate to be true, that every primary and essential desire of the human mind has a co-relative—or, in other words, a something to gratify it—existing in the nature of things. The mode in which the development of this principle constitutes an argument a priori for the existence and attributes of a God we now proceed to explain. Every human being feels from the moment in which he comes into existence, and through his whole subsequent history, that he is in himself a weak, helpless creature. As we have said, this feeling begins from the very beginning of our conscious existence. The appeals of the infant for aid are made continually.... As we advance to childhood, youth, and manhood, our sense of power gradually increases. We are conscious that under certain circumstances we can do something for ourselves. Yet this capability, we are also conscious in its very exercise, does not depend on us for its continuance. We cannot preserve to ourselves fortune, health, or even life, for a single moment. Yet all these things we desire, and desire with the utmost earnestness, and desire as a primary tendency of our minds. We may not indeed always clothe such desire in words—we may not put it into the form of a proposition; but that it exists in every mind as a feeling, and practically operates upon every individual, is as certain as our existence itself, and is indeed manifest every moment in the efforts which we make to preserve these and all other forms of what we believe to involve happiness. In this desire, consequently, we have the voice of nature speaking, and commanding us to use such efforts. Of ourselves we know that they would be insufficient. The results depend upon causes over which we have no control. Our own efforts, we are conscious, are only means which nature has appointed us to employ, but their success depends on circumstances altogether beyond our power. It is, as has been said, the voice of nature telling us that each of our desires has a co-relative, through which it may be fully gratified by the use of the proper means. This co-relative, in the case of intense and permanent happiness, can only be found in the existence of a God, omnipotent, omniscient, true, just, benevolent, and eternal, in whom we repose entire confidence. No other assumption could by possibility satisfy our desire for the highest and permanent happiness now and for ever. For to realise thoroughly the argument, it is to be observed that our desire is for the highest and permanent happiness. It is not imperfect or temporary happiness merely which we desire, though we may be compelled to be content with this, if we cannot procure more. It is the highest happiness possible for our natures, and that without end. Now, if such happiness is to be attained at all, it can only be obtained through a God possessed of the attributes which we have enumerated."—Natural Theology, pp. 71-74.
Prof. Wace, in the second course of his Boyle Lectures—Christianity and Morality (1876)—has exhibited, with considerable detail, and in an ingenious and eloquent manner, the testimony which conscience bears to a personal God, a moral Creator, and a moral Governor. A glimpse of his general idea may be obtained from the following words: "In our endeavour to trace in the conscience, and in the personal experience of individuals, the roots of our faith in a God of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, we have now advanced two considerable steps beyond our first and simplest sense of right and wrong. We have seen that this sense, when allowed to speak with its full imperative and personal force, arouses in us, as it aroused in the Psalmist, a sense of our being in contact with a personal and righteous Will. This conviction necessarily involves, as it involved in the writer of the 139th Psalm, the further belief that an authority which has this claim upon our obedience in every particular of our conduct, in all our thoughts and acts, must at the same time be the author and source of our whole constitution; that the righteous eyes which now penetrate, whether through darkness or through light, to the very depths of our souls, must also have seen our 'substance, yet being imperfect,' and that in their book must all our members have been written. If it be the imperative and paramount law of our nature to obey our conscience, and to make moral perfection, or spiritual excellence, our ultimate aim, we cannot but conclude that our whole nature, and the whole order of things in which we are placed, is in the hands of a moral power; and that, as we are fearfully and wonderfully made for righteous and reasonable ends, it must be by a righteous and reasonable Will that we are made. The conscience of man must never be omitted from our view of the design of man; and it is only when we contemplate the adjustment of his whole nature to the purposes of the loftiest moral development, that the argument from design acquires its full strength.... The apprehension of a Power which establishes righteousness as the law of life, involves also the conviction that it is able to enforce that law, and to render it finally and everywhere supreme. The conviction, indeed, is one of faith and not of demonstration; and the Scriptures, no less than life, are full of instances in which this faith is tried by the bitterest experience. Even prophets, as I have before observed, are at times driven to the cry that 'the law is slacked, and that judgment doth never go forth.' But the deepest instincts and necessities of conscience forbid the toleration of any such instinct of despair. If right were not essentially and ultimately might, I do not say—God forbid—that it would not still claim the supreme allegiance of the soul; but life would be a bitter mockery and an inexplicable cruelty. Not merely to be under an imperative law to pursue that which cannot be realised, but to be bound to such a fruitless pursuit by every noble and lovely influence—to be condemned in moral and spiritual realities to the torments of a Tantalus—this is a conception of human life against which the whole soul rebels. Accordingly, a God of all righteousness must of necessity be regarded as a God of all power.... That 'categorical imperative' of the conscience, on which the German philosopher insisted, is imperative in demanding not only a God, but an Almighty God."
Note XXXI., page [235].
Defects in the Physical World.
Lucretius (ii. 177-v. 196) has dwelt on the arrangements which render one zone of the earth torrid and others frigid—on the extent of barren heaths and rocks, of sands and seas—on the prevalence of unseasonable weather, storms, and tempests—and on the abundance of noxious herbs and destructive animals, &c.—as evidences that the earth was faulty and ill made, and could not be the work of a Divine Intelligence. Whether it was well or ill made appears to have been a favourite subject of dispute between the Epicureans and Stoics. Lactantius (De Ira Dei, c. xiii.) reports, and attempts to answer, the objections which the Epicureans and Academics were accustomed to urge against the constitution of the physical world. In Cudworth's 'Intellectual System,' vol. iii., pp. 464-8, Bentley's 'Folly of Atheism,' pt. i., Serm. 8; Derham's 'Astro-Theology,' book vii., c. 2, &c., such objections are discussed. In the remarks which I made on the subject in the lecture, I have had chiefly in view the opinions of Comte, J. S. Mill, and J. J. Murphy (Scientific Bases of Faith, c. xvi.)