Our knowledge of God is obtained as simply and naturally as our knowledge of our fellow-men. It is obtained, in fact, mainly in the same way. In both cases we refer certain manifestations of will, intelligence, and goodness--qualities which are known to us by consciousness--to these qualities as their causes. We have no direct or immediate knowledge--no intuitive or _a priori_ knowledge--of the intelligence of our fellow-creatures, any more than we have of the intelligence of our Creator; but we have a direct personal consciousness of intelligence in ourselves which enables us confidently to infer that the works both of God and of men can only have originated in intelligences. We grow up into knowledge of the mind of God as we grow in acquaintance with the minds of men through familiarity with their acts. The Father in heaven is known just as a father on earth is known. The latter is as unseen as the former. No human being has really ever seen another. No sense has will, or wisdom, or goodness for its object. Man must infer the existence of his fellow-men, for he can have no immediate perception of it; he must become acquainted with their characters through the use of his intelligence, because character cannot be heard with the ear, or looked upon with the eye, or touched with the finger. Yet a child is not long in learning to know that a spirit is near it. As soon as it knows itself, it easily detects a spirit like its own, yet other than itself, when the signs of a spirit's activity are presented to it. The process of inference by which it ascends from the works of man to the spirit which originates them is not more legitimate, more simple, or more natural, than that by which it rises from nature to nature's God.