I

CHRISTIAN INTUI

OBJECTIVE INTUITION.

SUBJECTIVE INTUITION OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS.— OF TRUTHS APPERTAINING TO GOD.

OF TRUTHS APPERTAINING TO

PROPOSE this evening to compare the evidence of intuition for the ultimate and fundamental truths of science with the evidence for the alleged truths of Christianity derived from the same source.

Intuition is the last test of science. When facts and phenomena have been duly collated, when experiments have been fully made, when partial inductions have been generalized, and a law or principle of extended application has been reached, it seems to the scientific man a necessary truth. He sees, not only that it is, but that it must be. It becomes self-evident, and forms thenceforward a part of his scientific consciousness. No universal scientific truth is fully established, until it is thus intuitively recognized as, of a priori necessity, appertaining to the department of science which it defines and comprehends.

A like intuition the Christian possesses as the result of his experience. He may at the outset rest for his belief mainly on testimony; he may enter on

a series of experiments in Christian living with faith rather than with knowledge: but, if he is true to his own soul, the time comes when he sees and knows from his own spiritual intuitions the verities of his religion; the excellence of its precepts; the beauty, holiness, loveliness, power of its Author. There is a stage at which argument or cavil may impair or overthrow his belief. There is a stage at which the truths of Christianity and the divine attributes of its Founder have so become a part of his own consciousness, that no force of reasoning can by any possibility dislodge them. Here, for instance, is a lone widow, who has been a mark for all the shafts of adverse fortune. Poor, infirm, lowly in estate, she has no treasure but her Bible, no hope but in its promises, no fountain of joy but that which flows "fast by the oracles of God." Yet she has a peace more profound, a joy more intense, than worlds could give. Her soul is a living transcript of the evangelic record. Her prayer is not the groping after an unknown God, but, as it were, a face-to-face communion. Her heaven is not in the far-off future, but in her own beatific experience. She has realized the promises. She has entered into the rest that remaineth for the people of God. Ply her with all the infidel arguments that have been started from the days of Celsus to the present moment, you cannot ruffle for an instant the serenity of her faith and trust. She knows whom she has believed. His life throbs in her veins. His words are strung in the living fibres of her whole being. She feels herself transformed into his image, a member

INTUITION DEFINED.

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of his body; and who shall separate her from the love of Christ? Now this intuitive knowledge of Christianity has been possessed by thousands for every one who has intuitive knowledge of scientific truths.

It is, moreover, the prerogative of Christianity over all other religions that its alleged truths can thus become intuitions. There could have been no intuition of the ceremonial law, which forms an essential part of Judaism. There can be no intuition of the vagaries of the Koran, of the avatars of the Hindoo mythology, of the chimæras of Buddhism. But there is not a (so-called) truth of Christianity, which, if true, is not of such a nature that it may, in some form or measure, enter into the consciousness, and thus rest on the same evidence on which we believe in our own existence. This statement cannot indeed be made as to the individual facts of the biography of Christ, nor yet as to the objective side of certain Christian doctrines but the facts of Christ's life are mere tokens of and pointers to the spiritual relations in which he professes to stand to the individual soul, as a sure guide, as a safe exemplar, as an infallible teacher, as an all-sufficient Saviour, and these relations, if real, may all become subjects of consciousness; while of the doctrines of Christianity there is not one which is simply and solely objective.

Let us not, however, content ourselves with general statements. Let us see what intuition comprehends, and how far, or under what conditions, it is availing as a source of evidence.

Intuition is inlooking. It is intellectual perception.

It is that apprehension of the truth which comes not from reasoning or proof, but from the nature of the case, from the nature of our own minds, or both. What we perceive intuitively shines either in its own light, or in light which we ourselves cast upon it. It either is self-evident, or it has the attestation of our own consciousness, and needs no other proof.

Intuition may thus be either objective or subjective. We may either so look into the object-matter of our thought or inquiry as to see in it that which could not but have been, that which, once apprehended, is its own sufficient evidence; or we may so look in upon our remembered and current experience as to recognize in it truths so manifest as to need no other proof than that of consciousness. Objective intuition has its chief scope in the mathematical and physical sciences; subjective, in mental and moral philosophy. Both objective and subjective are claimed in behalf of Christianity.

I will first speak of objective intuition. Christianity alone gives us a tenable theory of the universe. Independently of revelation, there are in the universe unmistakable and innumerable tokens of design, and thus of an intelligent Creator; of beneficent design, and thus of a merciful Creator. There are, in every department of nature, not chance coincidences, but organisms, processes, and products, which are manifestly adapted to the enjoyment of man and of other sentient beings, and which can have no other destination, can serve no other purpose. There are, on the other hand, no organisms, processes, or products, of

PROBLEM OF EVIL.

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which the necessary and inevitable tendency is the creation of pain, grief, or misery; but in the course of events physical evil is incidental, or subsidiary to greater good; its agencies, such as may be evaded, controlled, neutralized, often transformed and utilized, so that in proportion to the growth of man's intelligence they become subject to his command, and constantly tend to disappear. Man's own native powers of mind and soul, in their normal exercise, in the only exercise of them which the developed intellect can approve, tend to his self-respect, his growth in intelligence and capacity, and his enduring happiness. There is, however, in human society, and there has been in all past ages, an overwhelming amount of degradation and misery, almost all of which is visibly due to the depraved will of man. To this are chargeable, not only the immediate consequences of vice and sin, but as surely, though less directly, by far the larger part of the poverty, hardship, and physical infirmity and suffering in the world; for in a community of saints there would be no abject want, no social oppression or depression, and probably an ever-diminishing heritage of bodily disease and pain.

That a beneficent Creator should suffer this deteriorated condition of what is in potential capacity his noblest work upon earth to remain uncared for, is inconceivable. That he should provide in man and around him all possible powers of and materials for happiness, and yet leave him to make himself vile, and to bequeath from generation to generation, to the end of time, an accumulating burden of depravity