a _First Cause,_ unless we take
account of the universal and necessary truth that "every change must
have an efficient cause;" that all phenomena are an indication of
_power_; and that "there is an ultimate and sufficient reason why all
things exist, and are as they are, and not otherwise." There would be no
logical force in enumerating the facts of order and special adaptation
which literally crowd the universe, as proofs of the existence of an
_Intelligent Creator_, if the mind did not affirm the necessary
principle that "facts of order, having a commencement in time, suppose
mind as their source and exponent." There is no logical conclusiveness
in the assertion of Paley, "that _experience_ teaches us that a designer
must be a person," because, as Hume justly remarks, our "experience" is
narrowed down to a mere point, "and can not be a rule for a universe;"
but there is an infinitude of force in that dictum of reason, that
"intelligence, self-consciousness, and self-determination necessarily
constitute personality." A multiplicity of different effects, of which
experience does not always reveal the connection, would not conduct to a
single cause and to _one_ God, but rather to a plurality of causes and a
plurality of gods, did not reason teach us that "all plurality implies
an ultimate indivisible unity," and therefore there must be a _First
Cause_ of all causes, a _First Principle_ of all principles, _the
Substance_ of all substances, _the Being_ of all beings--_a God_ "of
whom, in whom, and to whom are all things" (panta ek tou Theou, en to
Theo eis ton Theon).

The conclusion, therefore, is, that, as the idea of God is a complex
idea, so there are necessarily a number of simple _a priori_ principles,
and a variety of experiential facts conspiring to its development in the
human intelligence.

(iii.) _The universe presents to the human mind an aggregation and
history of phenomena which demands the idea of a God--a self-existent,
intelligent, personal, righteous First Cause--as its adequate
explanation._

The attempt of Positivism to confine all human knowledge to the
observation and classification of phenomena, and arrest and foreclose
all inquiry as to causes, efficient, final, and ultimate, is simply
futile and absurd. It were just as easy to arrest the course of the sun
in mid-heaven as to prevent the human mind from seeking to pass beyond
phenomena, and ascertain the ground, and reason, and cause of all
phe