Shall I object to this Christian experience, because only comparatively few have it, and I am not among the number? Because I have not seen the moons of Jupiter, shall I doubt the testimony of the astronomer to their existence? Christian experience, like the sight of the moons of Jupiter, is attainable by all. Clarke, Christian Theology, 113—“One who will have full proof of the good God’s reality must put it to the experimental test. He must take the good God for real, and receive the confirmation that will follow. When faith reaches out after God, it finds him.... They who have found him will be the sanest and truest of their kind, and their convictions will be among the safest convictions of man.... Those who live in fellowship with the good God will grow in goodness, and will give practical evidence of his existence aside from their oral testimony.” 2. The Scriptures, therefore, do not attempt to prove the existence of God, but, on the other hand, both assume and declare that the knowledge that God is, is universal (Rom. 1:19-21, 28, 32; 2:15). God has inlaid the evidence of this fundamental truth in the very nature of man, so that nowhere is he without a witness. The preacher may confidently follow the example of Scripture by assuming it. But he must also explicitly declare it, as the Scripture does. “For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen” (καθορᾶται—spiritually viewed); the organ given for this purpose is the νοῦς (νοούμενα); but then—and this forms the transition to our next division of the subject—they are “perceived through the things that are made” (τοῖς ποιήμασιν, Rom. 1:20). On _Rom. 1:19-21_, see Weiss, Bib. Theol. des N. T., 251, note; also commentaries of Meyer, Alford, Tholuck, and Wordsworth; τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ = not “that which may be known” (Rev. Vers.) but “that which is known” of God; νοούμενα καθορᾶται = are clearly seen in that they are perceived by the reason—νοούμενα expresses the manner of the καθορᾶται (Meyer); compare _John 1:9_; _Acts 17:27_; _Rom. 1:28_; _2:15_. On _1 Cor. 15:34_, see Calderwood, Philos. of Inf., 466—ἀγνωσίαν Θεοῦ τινὲς ἔχουσι = do not possess the specially exalted knowledge of God which belongs to believers in Christ (_cf._ _1 Jo. 4:7—_“every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God”). On _Eph. 2:12_, see Pope, Theology, 1:240—ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ is opposed to being in Christ, and signifies rather forsaken of God, than denying him or entirely ignorant of him. On Scripture passages, see Schmid, Bib. Theol. des N. T., 486; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:62.