Now the question arises, is there any power or force clearly above the highest controlling power within us, i.e. above our conscience?  We say that there is.  There are some who on this point can reverently take up the words of our Great Master, “We speak that we do know.”  We believe, as firmly as we believe in our own existence, that this our conscience—­the highest power within us—­has been itself acted upon by a Higher Power still, a moral and spiritual Power, which has enlightened it, purified it, strengthened it, in fact renewed it.

Now, this purifying or enlightening of our moral powers has one remarkable effect.  It makes those who have been acted upon by it to look up out of this present state of things for a more direct revelation of the character and designs of the Supreme Being.  Minds who have experienced this action of a Superior Power upon them cannot possibly look upon the Supreme Being as revealing Himself merely by the laws of gravitation, or electricity, or natural selection.  We look for, we desire a further and fuller Revelation of God, even though the Revelation may condemn us.  We cannot rest without it.  It is intolerable to those who have a sense of justice, for instance, to think that, whilst led by their sense of what is good and right, men execute imperfect justice, there is, after all, no Supreme Moral Governor Who will render to each individual in another life that just retribution which is assuredly not accorded to all in this life. [152:1]

Now this, I say, makes us desire a revelation of the Supreme Moral Governor which is assuredly not to be found in the laws which control mere physical forces.  As Dr. Newman has somewhere said, men believe what they wish to believe, and assuredly we desire to believe that there is a supreme Moral Governor, and that He has not left us wholly in the dark respecting such things as the laws and sanctions of His moral government.  But has He really revealed these?  We look back through the ages, and our eyes are arrested by the figure of One Who, according to the author of “Supernatural Religion,” taught a “sublime religion.”  His teaching “carried morality to the sublimest point attained, or even attainable, by humanity.  The influence of His Spiritual Religion has been rendered doubly great by the unparalleled purity and elevation of His own character.  He presented the rare spectacle of a life, so far as we can estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent with His own lofty principles, so that the ‘imitation of Christ’ has become almost the final word in the preaching of His Religion, and must continue to be one of the most powerful elements of its permanence.” (Vol. ii. p. 487.)

It is quite clear from this testimony of an enemy to the Christian religion, as it appears in the Scriptures, that if the Supreme Moral Governor had desired to give to man a revelation of the principles and sanctions of His moral government, He could not have chosen a more fitting instrument.  Such a character seems to have been made for the purpose.  If He has not revealed God, no one has.