Now, to this first hypothesis we might append the further question:--supposing that God has imparted a knowledge of Himself to mankind--has spoken to them, and revealed Himself to them--is it not highly probable that He has ordained some institution for the further propagation and diffusion of revealed truth, and also for the maintenance as well of its original integrity as also of the right interpretation of it? But I must content myself with merely advancing this question. I can not attempt to prosecute it in the present place; for its further consideration would carry us out of the established limits of philosophy into the domain of history, and it involves, moreover, the positive articles of faith. But the previous question, whether the knowledge of God, which we either possess or are capable of possessing, be a science of absolute reason, or rather an understanding of given data, and consequently a science of experience, and resting, ultimately, on revelation--this certainly falls within the scope of philosophical investigation. Indeed, it forms the chiefest and most essential problem of philosophy, inasmuch as it is properly the very question of _being_ and _non-being_--of a true and human, or of an empty and imaginary science--that is here to be decided. On this account, a precise and correct phraseology is of the utmost importance toward a right solution of this leading topic of philosophical inquiry. Now, it is a fact deserving of remark, and well calculated to arrest our attention, that nowhere in Holy Writ, nowhere in all antiquity, or in any of the great teachers and philosophers of olden time, is there any mention made of God’s reason--but universally it is intelligence or understanding, an omniscient intelligence that is ascribed to Him. The wrongful interchange of the two words was reserved exclusively for our modern times, and for the epoch of the absolute rule of reason, and of the worse than Babylonish confusion of scientific terms which has arisen out of it. The only exceptions from the previous remark, which may be found in antiquity, are confined to one or two of the Stoics. But when we reflect how greatly their whole chapter on the Deity labors under the evil influence of that doctrine of an inevitable necessity and blind fate, which forms the reproach of the whole Stoical theory, this apparent exception serves to confirm the general rule, that a wrong use of language invariably has its source in a rationalistic basis of speculation, or, perhaps, is itself the spring and occasion of that erroneous point of view. God is unquestionably the author of reason. If, therefore, any one be disposed to call the divine order of things (which, however, is not the Deity himself) a divine reason, this is a mere matter of indifference. Only in such a case the question to be agitated would not involve the mere expression, but rather the meaning which is associated with it. But, for my part, I should prefer