1. _Innate ideas_.--With regard to these, very conclusive reasons have been advanced by eminent philosophers for disbelieving that we have any. And human experience confirms this conclusion. Some nations, as the people of the Arru Islands, have no idea of a God. So this source of knowledge concerning one is, to say the least, dubious. 2. _Senses_.--'No man hath seen God at any time,' is a sufficient reply to this--for the same may be affirmed of every other sense, which is here affirmed of sight. 3. _Conjecture_.--This defies us. We only prove our own inability and multiply difficulties. For when we suppose a God, we cannot suppose how he came, nor how he created something out of nothing, which is held by the learned to be plainly _impossible_.** * Oracle of Reason, No. 31, p. 251. ** Since this time Mr. Francis William Newman has put this argument unanswerably in these words; 'A God uncaused and existing from eternity, is to the full as incomprehensible as a world uncaused and existing from eternity'--'The Soul,' p. 36. Second edition. 4. _Analogy_ will not inform us. A small pivot or wheel cannot _infallibly_ indicate to us the mechanism to which it belongs, nor anything conclusive as to whether the whole had only one or more makers. So of the universe, no part can shadow forth the whole of that, nor inform us conclusively whether it had a creator or creators. And here it is to be observed the difficulty is greater than with machines--for a pivot or wheel is a finite part of a finite whole, and _both comprehensible_; but with the universe, all we can take cognisance of is but a very finite part of an _infinite_ whole, and that whole to all men acknowledged _incomprehensible_. Moreover, _creation_ can have no analogy--no one ever saw or can conceive of anything being created. So that this mode of learning the existence of a God fails. The Rev. Hugh M'Neile, M.A., minister of St. Jade's Church, Liverpool, in a lecture delivered to above four hundred of the Irish clergy, at the Rotunda in Dublin, said in reference to this part of the question, 'I am convinced, I say, that, from external creation, no right conclusion can be drawn concerning the _moral_ character of God. Creation is too deeply and disastrously blotted in consequence of man's sin, to admit of any satisfactory result from an _adequate_ contemplation of nature. The authors of a multitude of books on this subject, have given an inadequate and partial induction of particulars. Already aware (though perhaps scarcely recognising how or whence) that "God is love," they have looked on nature for proofs of this conclusion, and taken what suited their purpose. But they have not taken nature _as a whole_, and collected a conclusion fairly from impartial premises. They expatiate on the blessings and enjoyments of life, in the countless tribes of earth, air, and sea. But if life be a blessing, death is a curse. Nature