These fundamental principles, primitive judgments, axioms, or necessary and determinate forms of thought, exist potentially or germinally in all human minds; they are spontaneously developed in presence of the phenomena of the universe, material and mental; they govern the original movement of the mind, even when not appearing in consciousness in their pure and abstract form; and they compel us to affirm _a permanent being_ or _reality_ behind all phenomena--a _power_ adequate to the production of change, back of all events; a _personal Mind_, as the explanation of all the facts of order, and uniform succession, and regular evolution; and a _personal Lawgiver_ and _Righteous Judge_ as the ultimate ground and reason of all the phenomena of the moral world; in short, to affirm _an Unconditioned Cause of all finite and secondary causes; a First Principle of all principles; an Ultimate Reason of all reasons; an immutable Uncreated Justice, the living light of conscience; a King immortal, eternal, invisible, the only wise God, the ruler of the world and man_. Our position, then, is, that the idea of God is revealed to man in the natural and spontaneous development of his intelligence, and that the existence of a Supreme Reality corresponding to, and represented by this idea, is rationally and logically demonstrable, and therefore justly entitled to take rank as part of our legitimate, valid, and positive _knowledge_. And now from this position, which we regard as impregnable, we shall be prepared more deliberately and intelligibly to contemplate the various assaults which are openly or covertly made upon the doctrine that _God is cognizable by human reason_. CHAPTER VI. THE UNKNOWN GOD (_continued_). IS GOD COGNIZABLE BY REASON? "The abnegation of reason is not the evidence of faith, but the confession of despair."--LIGHTFOOT. At the outset of this inquiry we attempted a hasty grouping of the various parties and schools which are arrayed against the doctrine that God is cognizable by human reason, and in general terms we sought to indicate the ground they occupy. Viewed from a philosophical stand-point, we found one party marshalled under the standard of Idealism; another of Materialism and, again, another of Natural Realism. Regarded in their theological aspects, some are positive Atheists; others, strange to say, are earnest Theists; whilst others occupy a position of mere Indifferentism. Yet, notwithstanding the remarkable diversity, and even antagonism of their philosophical and theological opinions, they are all agreed in denying to reason any valid cognition of God.