ity of both elements, the universal as well as the particular, is immediately involved in every moral act.

Thus in our consciousness of moral action is involved the fundamental moral attribute of God, absolute holiness. Lastly, let us in a similar manner analyze the consciousness of Christian conduct, and see whether that does not likewise involve the Christian attribute of God.

If there be one act which sums up in itself the essence of Christianity, one which is equally prominent in the teaching of the sermon on the mount, in the life in Judæa and Galilee, and in the death upon the cross, that act is forgiveness :—in its widest sense, redemption. Whenever any man truly forgives another, I suppose no one will deny that so far forth he is a Christian, and whenever a man refuses to forgive, so far forth he is unchristian. This act of forgiveness then is a fair case of Christian conduct. Here, if anywhere, we may expect to find the revelation of the Christian attribute of God.

Suppose then a concrete instance. A man has ruined my reputation by circulating some scandalous falsehood. In so doing he has destroyed my personal happiness and welfare, and spread distrust and evil suspicion throughout a whole community. The man and his deed now become objects of my attention. I say the man and his deed, for they are essentially distinct things. A confusion of the two would render Christianity impossible, and according as the one or the other became more prominent, would land us either in a soft hearted antinomianism, or a pitiless Judaism.

In case I make the deed by itself the object of my thought, the discord between it and the ever present Universal Will is obvious, and I at once condemn it as I would any similar action of my own.

But suppose now, instead of contemplating the deed with its disastrous consequences, I make the doer and his sad condition. the object of my thought. What attitude shall I maintain toward him? Suppose I hate him and seek to injure him. Here, however, my particular feeling can not exist by itself. With more or less distinctness there is the ever-accompanying sense of a universal feeling of which this enemy of mine is the object. The all-important question for us is: Do the two ele

ments in this case harmonize? Do I feel that my hatred places me in harmonious accord with a universal hatred of all sinful men? This question is not easy to answer in all cases, because in the unreflective mood of indignation, we forget the distinction between the doer and the deed, and merge them together under the promiscuous imprecation which the deed itself unquestionably deserves. Then as in a few Hebrew psalms, the Universal Feeling seems to blend with the particular in a triumphant apotheosis of vengeance. When, however, the distinction is clearly made, when the injurer is thought of in his own personal nature, independent of his injury to me, then the feeling of hatred is condemned. The Universal Feeling which is coëxistent in my soul with my particular feeling, refuses to blend with it, and I am again in discord with myself. Thus in every act of deliberate hatred of an enemy, there is revealed to me by this discord in my consciousness, the fact that the Universal Feeling is not hate.

Suppose, then, that I forgive my enemy. Am I then at peace? Does the ever-present universal element conflict or blend with my particular forgiving act? Experience must answer. And the uniform testimony of all competent witnesses, from Jesus to the humblest of his true followers, is that in forgiveness, the universal and the particular, the divine and human are consciously at one. In every act of my forgiveness and its attendant peace, there is given a fresh proof of the forgiveness of the Father. The declaration of Jesus, "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you," is no arbitrary dictum, but the assertion of an eternal truth, attested in his own experience, and reaffirmed in the experience of every man in whom Christ dwells. If God were not forgiveness, then would each effort of man to forgive his neighbor be attended with discord and distress. Only in case the universal element in my conscious relation to a guilty. offender be forgiveness, can I feel free and unconstrained, serene and confident in my individual efforts to forgive. In forgiving one who has wronged me I do actually find the greatest peace and blessedness, and I therefore know that God is merciful and gracious. Thus does the consciousness of Christian conduct involve a revelation of the Christian attribute of God.

Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Absolute Righteousness, and Infinite Mercy, these are the divine attributes involved in the consciousness of every Christian man. The first three or the natural attributes of God, are involved in every stage of rational self-consciousness. The fourth, the moral attribute of God, is involved in the consciousness of every moral act. The fifth alone depends on an act of personal participation in the Christian consciousness; this once taken, the Christian attribute of God is as immediately revealed as either of the other four. Nor is this requirement of a doing of the will in order to a knowing of the doctrine, a peculiarity of this last stage. In every case there must be an act to be conscious of, before consciousness can take cognizance of it, and analyze its elements. But the other acts, of outer and inner perception, sensing physical force and exerting moral choice, we cannot help doing continually. With the Christian act of forgiveness on the contrary, we are not thus constantly occupied, and we rise to it only by specific effort. Given the Christian consciousness, however, as a fact of experience, and the revelation of the Divine forgiveness is as immediate as that of Omnipresence or Holiness. The evidence in either case is the same. The reality of any given phase of consciousness implies the reality of both its essential elements, the universal and the particular. If I forgive and am at conscious peace in so doing, that with which I am at peace must be itself forgive

ness.

It may seem that in thus making the evidence for the Divine Being conditional upon our own consciousness, the proof of the higher and more personal attribute of God is made unsteady and fluctuating. If I can believe in God only when I am my. self God-like, is not my faith in his forgiveness taken from me just when I need it most? At first sight it does seem as if such a view must regard as ultimate the declaration of Jesus: "To him that hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have." Yet in a higher sense he has himself done away with even this law of his own declaring. For he has not left us thus dependent on our own imperfect consciousness and its shadowy revelations. He has manifested a perfect forgiveness in life and

death, and thus borne witness out of the clear depths of his own transparent soul to the Divine forgiveness which alone made his forgiveness serene and triumphant. It is ours to substitute this perfect experience of his, with the perfect revelation which is of necessity involved therein, for the imperfections of our own Christian conduct and the consequent obscurity of its revelations. Thus to every one that believeth on him, and accepts the perfect revelation of Divine forgiveness which his complete forgiveness carries with it, does Christ become the allsufficient evidence of the Fatherhood of God; and that not by way of external argument and inference, but because his spirit bears witness with our spirit: because in the light of his clear consciousness we interpret the obscure revelations of the universal love given in our own imperfect consciousness of Christian character.

ARTICLE IV.-APRIORISMS AS ULTIMATE GROUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE.

"THE history of opinions touching the acceptation or rejection of such native notions," says Sir William Hamilton, referring to what are variously called 'first principles,' 'self-evident or intuitive truths,' 'apriori cognitions,' etc., is, in a manner, the history of philosophy." In every line of thought the human mind has shown a kind of irresistible tendency to assume certain principles, certain axioms, certain propositions, as being self-evident and therefore unquestionable; as shining by their own light and so needing no other. Such are first, original, independent truths which admit of no demonstration or proof simply because they are first, original, depending on no others. There is a feeling that there must be such first truths; for, how otherwise, could there be any proof of any truth? Mathemat ical truth starts, as by such a felt necessity, from so-called axioms-principles that have in themselves a claim upon thought to be accepted as incontrovertible foundations on which every thing in mathematics must depend. To question them is preposterous; they cannot be questioned. Physical science, equally, builds upon some such immovable rock of native cognition. That nature is uniform' is assumed as a basis on which all knowledge of the world around us may rest impregnable as the everlasting hills, a first truth, native to the human mind, self-evident, necessary. Philosophical speculation is as ready and as self-assuring in its presentation of apriori cognitions which are before all experience and are also even conditional to all experience. There are certain intuitions, known in specific applications by diverse names, as apriori forms of sense, categories of thought, ideas of reason, which, it is claimed, are pre-supposed in all mental apprehension and in all cognition of things or truths and which indeed determine the character, the content, the outline, and the hue of all such cognitions. Theological speculation shows itself to be animated and guided by the same universal instinct; it demonstrates the