3. _Duties in Relation to God_.--Here morality runs up into religion, and indeed since all duties are in their last analysis duties toward God, Kant and other moralists have objected to the admission into Ethics of a special class of religious obligations. It has been well remarked that the genuine Christian cannot be known by particular professions or practices, but only by the heavenly spirit of his life.[29] Hence religious duty cannot be formulated in a number of precise rules. Love to God finds expression not in mechanical obedience, but in the spontaneous outflow of the heart. The special duties to the Divine Being may be briefly described under the main heads of Recognition, Obedience, and Worship. (1) _Recognition_.--The acknowledgment of God rests upon knowledge. Without some comprehension of what God is there can be no intelligent allegiance to Him. We cannot, indeed, by logical reasoning demonstrate the existence of the Deity any more than we can demonstrate our own being. But He has not left Himself without a witness, and He speaks to man with many voices. The material creation is the primary word of God. The beauty, and still more the sublimity, of nature are a revelation through {216} matter of something beyond itself, a message of the spiritual, bearing 'authentic tidings of invisible things.' But nature is symbolic. It is a prophecy rather than an immediate revelation. Still it warrants the expectation of a yet fuller manifestation. That fuller utterance we have in man himself. There, spirit reveals itself to spirit; and in the two primary intuitions of man--self-consciousness and the sense of moral obligation--the presence of God is disclosed. But, higher still, the long historic evolution has culminated in a yet clearer manifestation of the Deity. In Christ, the God-Man, the mystery underlying and brooding over the world is unveiled, and to the eye of faith is revealed the Fatherhood of God. The first duty, therefore, we owe to God is that of recognition, the acknowledgment of His presence in the world. To feel that He is everywhere, sustaining and vitalising all things; to recognise His will in all the affairs of our daily life, is at once the duty and blessedness of man. (2) _Obedience_ follows acknowledgment. It is partly passive and partly active.