7. Yet even in the view of our moral constitution which natural reason gives, we may trace laws that imply a personal relation to our Creator. How can we avoid considering _that_ as a true view of man’s being and place, without which, his best faculties are never fully developed, his noblest energies never called out, his highest point of perfection never reached? Without the thought of a God over all, superintending our actions, approving our virtues, transcending our highest conceptions of good, man would never rise to those higher regions of moral excellence which we know him to be capable of attaining. “To deny a God,” again says the great philosopher, “destroys magnanimity and the raising of human nature; for take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on, when he finds himself maintained by a man; who, to him, is instead of a God, or _melior natura_: which courage is manifestly such, as that creature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faith, which human nature could not obtain. Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty.”[45] Such a law, then, of reference to a Supremely Good Being, is impressed upon our nature, as the condition and means of its highest moral advancement. And strange indeed it would be if we should suppose, that in a system where all besides indicates purpose and design, this law should proceed from no such origin; and no less inconceivable, that such a law, purposely impressed upon man to purify and elevate his nature, should delude and deceive him. 8. Nothing remains, therefore, but that the Creator, who, for purposes that even we can see to be wise and good, has impressed upon man this tendency to look to him for support, for advancement, for such happiness as is reconcileable with holiness;--to believe him to be the union of all perfection, the highest point of all intellectual and moral excellence;--IS, in reality, such a guardian and judge, such a good, and wise, and perfect Being, as we thus irresistibly conceive him. It would indeed be extravagant to assert that the imagination of the creature, itself the work of God, can invent a higher point of goodness, of justice, of holiness, than the Creator himself possesses: that the Eternal Mind, from whom our notions of good and right are derived, is not himself directed by the rules which these notions imply.