his heart?" Who but the "image" of his own thought? "If the cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the Object to which his perception is directed must be supernatural and divine." Assuredly; but what an inference from what an assumption! Whether or not the moral sense has been developed by natural causes, "these emotions" of terror at the thought of offending beings "supernatural and divine" are not of such unique occurrence "in the visible world" as to give Dr. Newman the monopoly of his particular "Object." With a deeper meaning, therefore, than he intends may we repeat, "The phenomena of conscience as a dictate _avail_ to impress the _imagination_ with the _picture_ of a Supreme Governor." But criticism here is positively painful. Let it be enough to say that those of us who do not already believe in any such particular "Object"--be it ghost, shape, demon, or deity--are strangers, utter and complete, to any such supernatural pursuers. The fact, therefore, of these various religious emotions being associated with conscience in the minds of theists, can in itself be no proof of Theism, seeing that it is the theory of Theism which itself _engenders_ these emotions; those who do not believe in this theory experiencing none of these feelings of personal dread, responsibility to an unknown God, and the feelings of doing injury to, or of receiving praise from, a parent. To such of us the violation of conscience is its own punishment, as the pursuit of virtue is its own reward. For we know that not more certainly than fire will burn, any violation of the deeply-rooted feelings of our humanity will leave a gaping wound which even time may not always heal. And when it is shown us that our natural dread of fire is due to a supernatural cause, we may be prepared to entertain the argument that our natural dread of sin, as distinguished from our dread of God, is likewise due to such a cause. But until this can be done we must, as reasonable men, _whose minds have been trained in the school of nature_, forbear to allow that the one fact is of any greater cogency than the other, so far as the question of a supernatural cause of either is concerned. For, as we have already seen, the law of parcimony forbids us to ascribe "the phenomena of conscience as a dictate" to a supernatural cause, until the science of psychology shall have proved that they cannot have been due to natural causes. But, as we have also seen, the science of psychology is now beginning, as quick and thoroughly as can be expected, to prove the very converse; so that the probability is now overwhelming that our moral sense, like all our other faculties, has been evolved. Therefore, while the burden of proof really lies on the side of Theism--or with those who account for the natural phenomena of conscience by the hypothesis of a supernatural origin--this burden is now being rapidly discharged by the opposite side.