Again, we are to conceive of the Creator as possessing a belief in those principles of reason which he has implanted in our minds, and made our guide in all matters, both of temporal and religious concern. Again, our experience of the nature and history of mind, leads to the inference that no being has existed from all eternity _in solitude_, but that there is _more than one eternal, uncreated mind_, and that all their powers of enjoyment from giving and receiving happiness in social relations have been in exercise from eternal ages. This is the just and natural deduction of reason and experience, as truly as the deduction that there is at least one eternal First Cause. Again, all our experience of mind involves the idea of the _mutual relation of minds_. We perceive that minds are made to match to other minds, so that there can be no complete action of mind, according to its manifest design, except in relation to other beings. A mind can not love till there is another mind to call forth such emotion. A mind can not bring a tithe of its power into appropriate action except in a community of minds. The conception of a solitary being, with all the social powers and sympathies of the human mind infinitely enlarged, and yet without any sympathizing mind to match and meet them, involves the highest idea of unfitness and imperfection conceivable, while it is contrary to our uniform experience of the nature and history of mind. It has been argued that the _unity of design_ in the works of nature proves that there is but one creating mind. This is not so, for in all our experience of the creations of finite beings no _great design_ was ever formed without a combination of minds, both to plan and to execute. The majority of minds in all ages, both heathen and Christian, have always conceived of the Creator as _in some way_ existing so as to involve the ideas of plurality and of the love and communion of one mind with another. And yet the unity and harmony of all created things as parts of one and the same design, teach _a degree_ of unity in the authorship of the universe never known in the complex action of finite minds. Thus a _unity_ and _plurality_ in the Creator of all things is educed by reason and experience from the works of nature. CHAPTER XIX. THE NATURE OF MIND OUR GUIDE TO THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. Having employed the principles of common sense to gain a knowledge of the natural attributes of God, we are next to employ the same principles to gain his _moral_ character; or those attributes which are exhibited in _willing_. In other words, we are to seek the character of God as expressed in his _works_ or _deeds_.