Diman, Theistic Argument, 363—“Nor have I claimed that the existence, even, of this Being can be demonstrated as we demonstrate the abstract truths of science. I have only claimed that the universe, as a great fact, demands a rational explanation, and that the most rational explanation that can possibly be given is that furnished in the conception of such a Being. In this conclusion reason rests, and refuses to rest in any other.” Rückert: “Wer Gott nicht fühlt in sich und allen Lebenskreisen, Dem werdet ihr nicht ihn beweisen mit Beweisen.” Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 307—“Theology depends on noetic and empirical science to give the occasion on which the idea of the Absolute Being arises, and to give content to the idea.” Andrew Fuller, Part of Syst. of Divin., 4:283, questions “whether argumentation in favor of the existence of God has not made more sceptics than believers.” So far as this is true, it is due to an overstatement of the arguments and an exaggerated notion of what is to be expected from them. See Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, translation, 140; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:119, 120; Fisher, Essays on Supernatural Origin of Christianity, 572, 573; Van Oosterzee, 238, 241. “Evidences of Christianity?” said Coleridge, “I am weary of the word.” The more Christianity was _proved_, the less it was _believed_. The revival of religion under Whitefield and Wesley did what all the apologists of the eighteenth century could not do,—it quickened men’s intuitions into life, and made them practically recognize God. Martineau, Types, 2:231—Men can “bow the knee to the passing _Zeitgeist_, while turning the back to the consensus of all the ages”; Seat of Authority, 312—“Our reasonings lead to explicit Theism because they start from implicit Theism.” Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality, 81—“The proofs are ... attempts to account for and explain and justify something that already exists; to decompose a highly complex though immediate judgment into its constituent elements, none of which when isolated can have the completeness or the cogency of the original conviction taken as a whole.”