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asmuch as man is a religious being, the instincts and emotions of his nature constraining him to worship, there must also be implanted in his rational nature some original _a priori_ ideas or laws of thought which furnish the necessary cognition of the object of worship; that is, some native, spontaneous cognition of God. A mere blind impulse would not be adequate to guide man to the true end and perfection of his being without rational ideas; a tendency or appetency, without a revealed object, would be the mockery and misery of his nature--an "ignis fatuus" perpetually alluring and forever deceiving man. That man has a native, spontaneous apperception of a God, in the true import of that sacred name, has been denied by men of totally opposite schools and tendencies of thought--by the Idealist and the Materialist; by the Theologian and the Atheist. Though differing essentially in their general principles and method, they are agreed in asserting that God is absolutely "_the unknown_;" and that, so far as reason and logic are concerned, man can not attain to any knowledge of the first principles and causes of the universe, and, consequently, can not determine whether the first principle or principles be intelligent or unintelligent, personal or impersonal, finite or infinite, one or many righteous or non-righteous, evil or good. The various opponents of the doctrine that God can be cognized by human reason may be classified as follows: I. _Those who assert that all human knowledge is necessarily confined to the observation and classification of phenomena in their orders of co-existence, succession, and resemblance_. Man has no faculty for cognizing substances, causes, forces, reasons, first principles--no power by which he can _know_ God. This class may be again subdivided into-- 1. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and classification of _mental_ phenomena (_e. g_., Idealists like J. S. Mill). 2. Those who limit all knowledge to the observation and classification of _material_ phenomena (_e. g_., Materialists like Comte). II. _The second class comprises all who admit that philosophic knowledge is the knowledge of effects as dependent on causes, and of qualities as inherent in substances; but at the same time assert that "all knowledge is of the phenomenal_." Philosophy can never attain to a positive knowledge of the First Cause. Of existence, absolutely and in itself, we know nothing. The infini
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