Again, no judgment can attain to the moral law of the Universe; and yet man knows it. Jesus Christ, when he proclaimed that law in the words "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself," only uttered what no man can, in thought, deny. A man can no more think selfishness as the moral law of the Universe, than he can think two and two to be five. Man not only sees the law, but he feels and acknowledges the obligation, even in his rebellion. In fact there would be no rebellion, no sense of sin, if there were no obligation. Whence comes the authority of the law? No power can give it authority, or enforce obedience. Power can crush a Universe, it cannot change a heart. The law has, and can have authority; it imposes, and can impose obligation; only because _it is an a priori law of the Universe_, alike binding upon _all_ moral beings, upon God as well as man; and is so seen immediately, and necessarily, by a direct intuition. Man finds this law fundamental to his self; and as well, a necessarily fundamental law of _all_ moral beings. _Therefore_ he acknowledges it. And the very efforts he makes to set up a throne for Passion, over against the throne of Benevolence, is an involuntary acknowledgment of the authority of that law he seeks to rival. It was said above, that neither Sense nor Understanding can take any cognizance of the objects of investigation which fall in this class. This is because the Sense can gather no material over which the Understanding can run. Is the moral law matter? No. How then can the Sense observe it? One answer may possibly be made, viz.: It is deduced from the conduct of men; and sense observes that. To this it is replied _a._ The allegation is not true. Most men violate the moral law of the Universe. Their conduct accords with the law of selfishness. Such conclusions as that of Hobbes, that war is the natural condition of Society, are those which would follow from a consideration of man, as he appears to the Sense. _b._ If it were true, the question obtrudes itself,--How came it there? _How came this fundamental law to be?_ and to this the Sense and Understanding return no shadow of answer. But from the stand-point of a Pure Reason, all is clear. All the ideas and beliefs, every process of thought which belongs to this sphere, are absolute and universal. They must be what they are; and so are conditional of all moral beings. Here what the human mind sees, is just what the Deity sees; and it sees just as the Divine mind sees, so that the truth, as far as so seen, is _common_ to both.