y named, which are created by the growth of the
various sciences.(97) It is the influence of the Psychological branch that
we are now illustrating, by showing that the various theories in respect
of it give their type to various forms of belief and doubt.

The well-known threefold distribution of the faculties that form the
ultimate grounds of conviction will suffice for our purpose: viz.,
sensational consciousness revealing to us the world of matter; intuitive
reason that of mind; and feeling that of emotion.(98) These are the forms
of consciousness which supply the material from which the reflective
powers draw inferences and construct systems.

It is easy to exhibit the mental character which each would have a
tendency to generate when applied to a special subject like religion,
natural or revealed.

If the eye of sense be the sole guide in looking around on nature, we
discover only a universe of brute matter, phenomena linked together in
uniform succession of antecedents and consequents. Mind becomes only a
higher form of matter. Sin loses its poignancy. Immortality disappears.
God exists not, except as a personification of the Cosmos. Materialism,
atheism, fatalism, are the ultimate results which are proved by logic and
history(99) to follow from this extreme view. The idea of spirit cannot be
reached by it. For if some other form of experience than the sensitive be
regarded as the origin of knowledge; if a nobler view be forced on us by
the very inability even to express nature's phenomena without superadding
spiritual qualities; if regularity of succession(100) suggest the idea of
order and purpose and mind; if adaptation suggest the idea of morality; if
movement suggest the idea of form and will; if will suggest the idea of
personality; if the idea of the Cosmos suggest unity, and thus we mount
up, step by step, to the conception of a God, possessing unity,
intelligence, will, character, we really transfer into the sphere of
nature ideas taken from another region of being, viz., from our
consciousness of ourselves, our consciousness of spirit. It is mental
association that links these ideas to those of sense, and gives to a
sensational philosophy properties not its own. If however sensational
experience can by any means arrive at the notion of natural religion; yet
it will find a difficulty, created by its belief of the uniformity of
nature, in taking the further step of admitting the miraculous
interference w