Now there is a natural order in which the knowledge of God is clearly differentiated and fully developed in the human mind; and this order is distinctly recognized and noted in the words of St. Paul--"That they may _seek_ God, and truly _feel_ God, and actually _find_ God." 1. There is an earnest _inquiry_ (ζητεῖν)--a search after God. This is the effort of reflective thought to attain a more exact and definite conception of that Power and Intelligence which the spontaneous consciousness of man immediately and instinctively affirms as the ground and cause and law of the created universe. 2. There is a real _feeling_ (ψηλαφᾶν) of God--an awakening consciousness of some near relation to God, excited by the voice of conscience and the spiritual affinities and yearnings of the soul. There is, as it were, a "_touching_" of the living God[491]--the sense of a living bond which holds man to God, not merely by a consciousness of dependence and obligation, but a spiritual nexus, a real filiation, which enables man to articulate the wondrous words, "_We are the offspring of God_." 3. There is an actual _finding_ (εὑρίσκειν) of God--that higher religious consciousness in which the pure and earnest soul attains a personal knowledge, and enters into a beatifying communion with "the Father of the human spirit." This direct "manifestation of God" in its highest form is the peculiar glory of that new and divine life of the soul communicated through Christian faith, for which all antecedent knowledges and experiences, whether of the individual mind or of collective humanity, are a preparation and a discipline.