It stands with them as ill as with the arguments for his existence. Not only do post-Kantian idealists reject them root and branch, but it is a plain historic fact that they never have converted anyone who has found in the moral complexion of the world, as he experienced it, reasons for doubting that a good God can have framed it. To prove God’s goodness by the scholastic argument that there is no non-being in his essence would sound to such a witness simply silly.
No! the book of Job went over this whole matter once for all and definitively. Ratiocination is a relatively superficial and unreal path to the deity: “I will lay mine hand upon my mouth; I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee.” An intellect perplexed and baffled, yet a trustful sense of presence—such is the situation of the man who is sincere with himself and with the facts, but who remains religious still.
We must therefore, I think, bid a definitive goodbye to dogmatic theology. In all sincerity our faith must do without that warrant. Modern idealism, I repeat, has said