Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/57

10 but can furnish no Idea of those things when there is no corresponding sensation, so we may convince a man's understanding of the soundness of our argumentation, but yet give him no Idea of God unless he have previously an intuitive sense thereof. Without the intuitive perception, the metaphysical argument gives us only an idea of abstract Power and Wisdom; the argument from design gives only a limited and imperfect Cause for the limited and imperfect effects. Neither reveals to us the Infinite God.

The Idea of God then transcends all possible external experience, and is given by intuition, or natural revelation, which comes of the joint and spontaneous action of reason and the religious element. Now theoretically this Idea involves no contradiction and is perfect: that is, when the proper conditions are complied with, and nothing disturbs the free action of the spirit, we receive the Idea of a Being, infinite in Power, Wisdom, and Goodness; that is, infinite, or perfect, in all possible relations. But practically, in the majority of cases, these conditions are not observed; men attempt to form a complex and definite conception of God. The primitive Idea, eternal in Man, is lost sight of. The conception of God, as men express it in their language, is always imperfect; sometimes self-contradictory and impossible. Human actions, human thoughts, human feelings, yes, human passions and all the limitations of mortal men, are collected about the Idea of God. Its primitive simplicity and beauty are lost. It becomes self-destructive; and the conception of God, as many minds set it forth, like that of a Griffin, or Centaur, or “men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,” is self-contradictory; the notion of a being who, from the very nature of things, could not exist. They for the most part have been called Atheists who denied the popular conception of God, showed its inconsistency, and proved that such a being could not be. The