It is not, therefore, rational necessity, but vital anguish that impels us to believe in God. And to believe in God--I must reiterate it yet again--is, before all and above all, to feel a hunger for God, a hunger for divinity, to be sensible of His lack and absence, to wish that God may exist. And it is to wish to save the human finality of the Universe. For one might even come to resign oneself to being absorbed by God, if it be that our consciousness is based upon a Consciousness, if consciousness is the end of the Universe. "The wicked man hath said in his heart, There is no God." And this is truth. For in his head the righteous man may say to himself, God does not exist! But only the wicked can say it in his heart. Not to believe that there is a God or to believe that there is not a God, is one thing; to resign oneself to there not being a God is another thing, and it is a terrible and inhuman thing; but not to wish that there be a God exceeds every other moral monstrosity; although, as a matter of fact, those who deny God deny Him because of their despair at not finding Him. And now reason once again confronts us with the Sphinx-like question--the Sphinx, in effect, is reason--Does God exist? This eternal and eternalizing person who gives meaning--and I will add, a human meaning, for there is none other--to the Universe, is it a substantial something, existing independently of our consciousness, independently of our desire? Here we arrive at the insoluble, and it is best that it should be so. Let it suffice for reason that it cannot prove the impossibility of His existence. To believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is to act as if He existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the inner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begets hope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of this divine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness. Let us see how this may be. FOOTNOTES: [38] Lecture I., p. 36. London, 1895, Black. [39] _No quiero acordarme_, a phrase that is always associated in Spanish literature with the opening sentence of _Don Quijote: En an lugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme_.--J.E.C.F. [40] W. Hermann, _Christlich systematische Dogmatik_, in the volume entitled _Systematische christliche Religion. Die Kultur der Gegenwart_ series, published by P. Hinneberg. [41] _Dieu a fait l'homme à son image, mais l'homme le lui a bien rendu_, Voltaire.--J.E.C.F. [42] _Vivir un mundo_. [43] _Sermons_, by the Rev. Frederick W. Robertson. First series, sermon iii., "Jacob's Wrestling." Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübuer and Co., London, 1898. IX FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY Sanctius ac reverentius visum de actis deorum credere quam scire.--TACITUS: _Germania_, 34.