(_a_) _In the organizing instinct of the human mind._ This organizing principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective; just in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets the deepest want of man’s rational nature. Theology is a rational necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law, that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering. Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for the corruption of God’s truth or in a naturally illogical structure of mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the restraints of a complete Scriptural system. President E. G. Robinson: “Every man has as much theology as he can hold.” Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as naturally as we speak prose. “Se moquer de la philosophie c’est vraiment philosopher.” Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means that he must attempt ‘to give account of things,’ as Plato said, ‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’ ” Men often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173, satirically exhorts us: “Trust your genius; follow your noble heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the romanticists.” Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they have it.” See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.