Man, say some, knows God by immediate intuition; he needs no argument for His existence, because he perceives Him directly--face to face--without any medium. It is easy to assert this, but obviously the assertion is the merest dogmatism. Not one man in a thousand who understands what he is affirming will dare to claim to have an immediate vision of God, and nothing can be more likely than that the man who makes such a claim is self-deluded. It is not difficult to see how he may be deluded. There is so much that is intuitive involved in the apprehension of God that the apprehension itself may readily be imagined to be intuitive. The intuitive nature of the conditions which it implies may arrest the attention, and the fact that they are simply conditions may be overlooked. The possibility, however, of analysing the apprehension into simpler elements--of showing that it is a complex act, and presupposes conditions that can be indicated--is a conclusive proof that it is no intuition, that our idea of God is no more or otherwise intuitive than our idea of a fellow-man. Besides, what seem intuitions are often really inferences, and not unfrequently erroneous inferences; what seem the immediate dictates of pure reason, or the direct and unclouded perceptions of a special spiritual faculty, may be the conceits of fancy or the products of habit and association, or the reflections of strong feeling. A man must prove to himself, and he must prove to others, that what he takes to be an intuition is an intuition. Is that proof in this case likely to be easier or more conclusive than the proof of the Divine existence? The so-called immediate perception of God must be shown to be a perception and to be immediate; it must be vindicated and verified: and how this is to be done, especially if there be no other reasons for believing in God than itself, it is difficult to conceive. The history of religion, which is what ought to yield the clearest confirmation of the alleged intuition, appears to be from beginning to end a conspicuous contradiction of it. If all men have the spiritual power of directly beholding their Creator--have an immediate vision of God--how happens it that whole nations believe in the most absurd and monstrous gods? that millions of men are ignorant whether there be one god or thousands? that even a people like the Greeks could suppose the highest of their deities to have been born, to have a body, and to have committed the vilest actions? A true power of intuition is little susceptible of growth, and its testimonies vary within narrow limits; any development of which it admits is only slightly due to external conditions, and mainly the necessary consequence of internal activity, of inherent expansibility. It is thus, for example, with the senses of sight and hearing, in so far as they are intuitive. But it is manifestly very different with the religious nature. Its growth is mainly dependent,