With regard to the first, there is no doubt that the belief in God will in any age find its strongest corroboration in the conscience. Even in the mind of a Felix the ideas of 'righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come' had a strange and terrifying coherence. There is that much of truth in the statement that religion is founded in 'fear.' But the argument from conscience has been weakened by being overstated. Conscience, as we know it, has won, not indeed its existence, but the delicacy of its moral touch, and the strength of its 'categorical imperative,' from the assured belief in a real relationship between man and a holy and loving God. When that belief has ceased to exist, conscience still survives, and it is possible and justifiable to appeal to it as a fact which can be explained by religion, but without religion must be explained away. But it is a mistake to suppose that we can take the untrained and undeveloped conscience, and argue direct from it to a righteous God. The _lumen naturale_, in its lowest development, gives but a faint and flickering gleam. We cannot argue back from it to a God of love, or even a God of righteousness, unless we interpret it in the fuller light of the conscience which has been trained and perfected under the growing influence of the belief. The idea of 'duty,' which is so hard to explain on utilitarian grounds, is not to be found, as we know it, in Greek ethics. For it implies a fusion of morals with religion, as we can trace it in the history of Israel, and the teaching of Christian ethics. If it is impossible to explain duty as the result of association between the ideas of public and private advantage, it is no less impossible to make it an independent premise for a conclusion which is presupposed in it.