The _logical demonstration_ of the being of God commences with the analysis of thought. It asks, What are the ideas which exist in the human intelligence? What are their actual characteristics, and what their primitive characteristics? What is their origin, and what their validity? Having, by this process, found that some of our ideas are subjective, and some objective that some are derived from experience, and that some can not be derived from experience, but are inherent in the very constitution of the mind itself, as _à priori_ ideas of reason; that these are characterized as self-evident, universal, and necessary and that, as laws of thought, they govern the mind in all its conceptions of the universe; it has formulated these necessary judgments, and presented them as distinct and articulate propositions. These _à priori_, necessary judgments constitute the major premise of the Theistic syllogism, and, in view of the facts of the universe, necessitate the affirmation of the existence of a God as the only valid explanation of the facts. The _natural_ or _chronological order_ in which the idea of God is developed in the human intelligence, is the reverse process of the scientific or logical order, in which the demonstration of the being of God is presented by philosophy; the latter is _reflective_ and _analytic_, the former is _spontaneous_ and _synthetic._ The natural order commences with the knowledge of the facts of the universe, material and mental, as revealed by sensation and experience. In presence of these facts of the universe, the _à priori_ ideas of power, cause, reason, and end are evoked into consciousness with greater or less distinctness; and the judgment, by a natural and spontaneous logic, free from all reflection, and consequently from all possibility of error, affirms a necessary relation between the facts of experience and the _à priori_ ideas of the reason. The result of this involuntary and almost unconscious process of thought is that natural cognition of a God found, with greater or less clearness and definiteness, in all rational minds. The _à posteriori_, or empirical knowledge of the phenomena of the universe, in their relations to time and space, constitute the minor premise of the Theistic syllogism.