It must, therefore, think of its maker as "a thinking being," and in this it is _absolutely and completely right_.[255] Either, therefore, the hypothesis is _absurd_ or it actually _demonstrates the very position it was chosen to refute_.
Unquestionably, then, on the mere ground taken by Mr.Herbert Spencer himself, if we are compelled to think of the First Cause either in human terms (but with human imperfections abstracted and human perfections carried to the highest conceivable degree), or, on the other hand, in terms decidedly inferior, such as those are driven to who think of Him, but decline to accept as a help the term "personality;" there can be no question but that the first conception is immeasurably nearer the truth than the second.

Yet the latter is the one put forward and advocated by that author in spite of its unreasonableness, and in spite also of its{251} conflicting with the whole moral nature of man and all his noblest aspirations.
Again, Mr.Herbert Spencer objects to the conception of God as "first cause," on the ground that "when our symbolic conceptions are such that no cumulative or indirect processes of thought can enable us to ascertain that there are corresponding actualities, nor any predictions be made whose fulfilment can prove this, then they are altogether vicious and illusive, and in no way distinguishable from pure fictions."[256] Now, it is quite true that "symbolic conceptions," which are not to be justified either (1) by presentations of sense, or (2) by intuitions, are invalid as representations of real truth.

Yet the conception of God referred to _is_ justified by our primary intuitions, and we can assure ourselves that it _does_ stand for an actuality by comparing it with (1) our intuitions of free-will and causation, and (2) our intuitions of morality and responsibility.

That we _have_ these intuitions is a point on which the Author joins issue with Mr.Spencer, and confidently affirms that they cannot logically be denied without at the same time complete and absolute scepticism resulting from such denial--scepticism wherein vanishes any certainty as to the existence both of Mr.Spencer and his critic, and by which it is equally impossible to have a thought free from doubt, or to go so far as to affirm the existence of that very doubt or of the doubter who doubts it.
It may not be amiss here to protest against the intolerable assumption of a certain school, who are continually talking in lofty terms of "science," but who actually speak of primary religious conceptions as "unscientific," and habitually employ the word "science," when they should limit it by the prefix "physical." This is the more amazing as not a few of this school adopt the idealist philosophy, and affirm that "matter and force" are but names for certain "modes of consciousness." It might be expected of them at least to admit that opinions which repose on primary and fundamental {252} intuitions, are especially and _par excellence_ scientific.
Such are some of the objections to the Christian conception of God.

We may now turn to those which are directed against God as the Creator, _i.e._ as the absolute originator of the universe, without the employment of any pre-existing means or material.