Hibbert Lectures; Le Conte, in Royce’s Conception of God, 43-50; Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 297-301, 311-317, and Immanence of God, 5-32, 116-153; Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge, 574-590, and Theory of Reality, 525-529; Edward Caird, Evolution of Religion, 2:48; Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 2:258-283; Göschel, quoted in Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:170. An attempt has been made to treat the whole subject by A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation and Ethical Monism, 1-86, 141-162, 166-180, 186-208. PART III. THE SCRIPTURES A REVELATION FROM GOD. Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations. I. Reasons _a priori_ for expecting a Revelation from God. 1. _Needs of man’s nature._ Man’s intellectual and moral nature requires, in order to preserve it from constant deterioration, and to ensure its moral growth and progress, an authoritative and helpful revelation of religious truth, of a higher and completer sort than any to which, in its present state of sin, it can attain by the use of its unaided powers. The proof of this proposition is partly psychological, and partly historical. A. Psychological proof.—(_a_) Neither reason nor intuition throws light upon certain questions whose solution is of the utmost importance to us; for example, Trinity, atonement, pardon, method of worship, personal existence after death. (_b_) Even the truth to which we arrive by our natural powers needs divine confirmation and authority when it addresses minds and wills perverted by sin. (_c_) To break this power of sin, and to furnish encouragement to moral effort, we need a special revelation of the merciful and helpful aspect of the divine nature.