Is There a God? 35 eration. The question remains, How did this idea first orig- inate in the soul ? To answer that it gradually grew up out of totemism and animism as practiced by the low-grade races who, impelled by superstitious fears, conceived material ob- jects to be inhabited by ghosts or spirits, is equally an evasion of the problem. Because again the question arises, How did these low-grade races arrive at the conception of spirits as distinguished from bodies or material objects in general? Should it be responded that veneration for deceased ancestors begat the conception of a God, one must further demand by what process of reasoning they were conducted from the con- ception of as many gods as there were deceased ancestors to that of one Supreme Deity or Lord of all. The only satis- factory explanation of the latent consciousness of God which man in all ages and lands has shown himself to be possessed of is, that it is one of the soul’s intuitions, a part of the intel- lectual and moral furniture with which it comes into the world; that at first this idea or intuition lies within the soul as a seed corn which gradually opens out as the soul rises into full possession of its powers and is appealed to by external nature; that had sin not entered into the world this idea or intuition would have everywhere expanded into full bloom, filling the soul with a clear and radiant conception of the Divine Being, in whose image it has been made; but that now in consequence of the blighting influence of sin this idea or intuition has been everywhere more or less dimmed and weakened and in hea- then nations corrupted and debased. Then rising to the, distinctly religious experience of con- version, the Christian encounters a whole series or group o f phenomena which to him are inexplicable, if there is no God. Conscious of a change partly intellectual but m a in ly moral and spiritual, a change so complete as to amount to an inward revolution, what Scripture calls a new birth or a new creation, he cannot trace it to education or to environment, to philosophical reflection or to prudential considerations.
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