Conscience has from the earliest times and among the rudest peoples exercised great influence in the formation of religious belief. Moral reasons weighed with men in their origination and elaboration of religion long before they expressed them in abstract propositions and logical forms. The historical proof of this truth is so ample that it would require a volume to do it justice: all literatures might be made to yield contributions to it. The simplest form of the moral argument, and the one which has been most generally employed, is that of an inference from the moral law to a moral lawgiver. Closely associated with it are those forms which rest on the emotions involved in or accompanying virtue and guilt. These are the directest modes of exhibiting what Chalmers calls "the theology of conscience, which is not only of wider diffusion but of far more practical influence than the theology of academic demonstration." Raymond of Sebonde, in a work which I have previously had occasion to mention, was perhaps the first to present it in a more artificial form. He argues thus: Man is a responsible being who can neither reward nor punish himself, and who must consequently be under a superior being who will reward and punish him, unless his life is to be regarded as vain and purposeless--unless even the whole of external nature, which is subject to man and exists for his sake, is to be pronounced aimless and useless. External nature, however, is seen to be throughout orderly and harmonious; how can we suppose the moral world to be disorderly and chaotic? As the eye corresponds to things visible, the ear to things audible, the reason to things intelligible, so conscience must correspond to a judgment which implies some one to pronounce it, and to a retribution which implies some one to inflict it. But this some one must be absolutely just; he must be omniscient, as possessing a perfect knowledge of all human actions, and a thorough insight into their moral character; omnipotent, to execute his judgments; and, in a word, must be the most perfect of all beings--_i.e._, God. Kant's argument is thus summarised by the Archbishop of York: "The highest good of man consists of two parts, the greatest possible morality and happiness. The former is the demand of his spiritual, the latter of his animal nature. The former only, his morality, is within his own power; and while, by persevering virtue, he makes this his personal character, he is often compelled to sacrifice his happiness. But since the desire of happiness is neither irrational nor unnatural, he justly concludes either that there is a Supreme Being who will so guide the course of things (the natural world, not of itself subject to moral laws) as to render his holiness and happiness equal, or that the dictates of his conscience are unjust and irrational. But the latter supposition is morally impossible; and he is compelled, therefore, to receive the former as true."