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 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BL 2710 .J46 1877 
 Jenkins, E. E. 1820-1905. 
 Modern atheism, its positio] 
 and promise 
 
MODERN ATHEISM 
 
 ITS POSITION AND PROMISE 
 
 BEING ^-vJl ^fCAL V C-^^ 
 
 THE FEENLEY LECTUEE OF 1S77 
 
 BY E. E. JENKINS, M.A. 
 
 LONDON: 
 WESLEYAN METHODIST BOOK ROOM 
 
 2, CASTLE STREET, CITY ROAD, E.G. 
 
 AND CG, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 
 
MODERN ATHEISM, Etc. 
 
 The subject of tins Lecture was chosen for me by a late 
 honoured and beloved friend whose death is the heaviest of 
 the many Connexional bereavements of this year. He was 
 pleased to think that I might expose the logical inconsistencies 
 and the grave practical hazards of modern unbelief : and he 
 looked forward to the execution of the duty allotted to me, 
 and to the delivery of the Lecture here to-day, with an 
 interest which, while it flattered my insufficient talents, en- 
 couraged the exertions by which the work, such as it is, has 
 been done. To miss his presence at this moment, and the 
 greeting of his approval at the end of my task, is to finish it 
 in the shadow of death. No man among us was more alive 
 to the perils of speculative licence on the Theism of Christi- 
 anity than Mr. Perks. His various and careful reading in 
 the literature of theological polemics, made him an able dis- 
 putant on questions that occupy the border-land of revelation 
 and philosophy : and as a defender of what he believed to be 
 the truth, no one exceeded him in the courage and sincerity of 
 his loyalty to the great Eabbi and Lord of all. That he was 
 right while he lived is proved, so far, by the strength and 
 consolation of his convictions when he died. 
 
 Those who are able to appreciate the difficulty of bringing 
 within the compass of a lecture even the bare outlines of our 
 subject, will be ready to accord to me the encouragement of 
 their sympathy. I shall be deeply thankful if I can add 
 
MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 anything to the argument of a personal God which shall meet 
 even the temporary requirement of that argument, and check, 
 within such circles as we may be able to command, the 
 insidious advances of what threatens to be one of the most 
 destructive blights which ever fell upon the Vine of the Lord 
 of Hosts. It will be remembered that that which is now 
 challenged by those who have influence in letters and science, 
 is the foundation of all Christian doctrine, and of all ethical 
 teaching : for that which we believe to be the fountain of 
 moral power, that upon which w^e have built up the govern- 
 ment and order of our families, that wdiich is the home of 
 the loveliest and most sacred of our associations, that which is 
 the inspiration of whatever is sublime in the hopes, the 
 imaginations, and the charities of mankind, will perish with 
 the doctrine of a personal God. 
 
 The present condition of philosophical and religious thought 
 cannot for any practical advantage be understood, unless we 
 consider that human opinions like human manners are subject 
 to periodic fashions. They have the run of a season, like a 
 mode or style, disappear, and return to favour to repeat a 
 similar liistory. While they retain their popularity they rule 
 tlie public mind with the authority of truth itself : and our 
 danger is lest, during their perilous though temporary 
 ascendency, we should loosen our hold of some unchangeable 
 verity ; which may be hidden, and even for a time lost, but 
 can never move of itself and can never be moved. We have 
 an illustration of this remark in the fasliion of accepting 
 speculations of science as if they were discoveries. The 
 unusual triumphs which have crowned recent scientific 
 labours have tempted certain thinkers to push their w^ay 
 beyond the firm ground of inductive evidence into regions of 
 thought where scientific methods cannot be applied ; and the 
 reputation which they have justly won in their own field has 
 
THE POSITION OF MA TERIALISM. ^ 
 
 given weight and currency to whatever ulterior opinions they 
 are pleased to countenance. The error which is just now 
 contending^ for renown is the atheistic foundation of the 
 Universe. Certain materialists, with eminent inconsistency, 
 have given a scientific shape to what is after all a mere guess 
 projected beyond what is proved. That which our fathers 
 considered a darincj and wicked thous^ht has been introduced 
 into important or respectable speculations, as if it were the 
 sequence of scientific experiment ; and it has passed into 
 popular literature as identified with the progress of the 
 human mind. We know that in that progress it must dis- 
 appear ; but meanwhile the flood may submerge us before the 
 tide turn ; and it becomes those whose homes lie near the 
 currents of public opinion, to guard their property against a 
 threatened inundation. 
 
 If we understand the position of materialism as against 
 theology, it is the denial of the knowledge of God, on the 
 ground that that knowledge is impossible ; in other words, we 
 are made atheists, either really, by the fact that there is no 
 God, or relatively, by the limits of our understanding making 
 any certainty on the subject unattainable. Let us state at 
 once that the conception we attach to the word God is that 
 of a primal Mind ; for if our reasoning cannot carry us to 
 the demonstration of a first intelligence, then, though we may 
 admit such phrases as first cause, and, the original of all 
 FORCES, it leaves us atheists. I do not see how the position 
 is relieved by advancing it to the unknown and the unknow- 
 able. If nothing can be known by the human mind in 
 regard to the question of God's existence, the intellectual 
 state of the world is atheism, and has always been atheism. 
 There is a popular stigma cleaving to the word atheist or 
 atheism ; but to allow a prejudice of this kind to interfere 
 with exact expression, will only add another difficulty and a 
 
MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 serious one to those which already beset this discussion. I 
 shall take atheism to mean the non-recognition of a first 
 originating Mind ; whether it arise from the persuasion that 
 there is no such Mind ; or from the scepticism which leaves 
 the question among merely abstract possibilities. 
 
 My purpose in this lecture is to examine the proposition 
 tliat it is impossiUe for the human mind to know that there is a 
 God. Those who maintain this proposition can hardly mean 
 that they have discovered the exact limits of the human 
 understanding, and the nature and ultimate range of all 
 phenomena, material and intellectual, that can possibly affect 
 the judgment of the mind in determining for itself the 
 question of the existence of God ; and yet the assertion seems 
 to need the warrant of this extraordinary and impossible 
 condition. But suppose it means simply that this knowledge 
 has never yet been certainly attained ; and it must express 
 so much, if it comprehend no more. It is then affirmed that 
 at no period of its history has the mind of man found 
 sufficient evidence in any region or source of knowledge, to 
 justify belief in an intelligent first cause of all things and 
 distinct from all things, in a word, God, the Creator of all 
 things : that there may be such a Being, but that the most 
 advanced researches in the world of matter and of mind leave 
 the decision of the question undetermined. Assuming that 
 this position of the Scientists is unassailable, from their 
 review of the history of all philosophies, and all religions, 
 and all races, are they prepared to say that in the future 
 development of mental power, among the wonders yet in 
 store for reason, for experiment, and for faith, there may not 
 be discoveries that shall free this question from its present 
 difficulties, and make it possible for an ever-progressing 
 science to declare in some future period the origin or autlior- 
 ship of the Creation ? In reflecting upon the achievements 
 
THE HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 of philosophy during this century, than which no Eastern 
 fable ever conceived greater marvels, it may not be absurd to 
 suppose that man will yet learn by proofs which even science 
 will be compelled to admit whether he has a Maker or no. 
 If the time should ever come when that which is now in 
 doubt shall be positively known, then supposing the discovery 
 refute conclusively the proposition that there is a God, an 
 immemorial and universal illusion which has had more power 
 over the destinies of the human race than all the sciences, 
 will disappear, and the education of mankind will have to 
 begin again : if, on the other hand, the proposition be 
 affirmed, the truth that God exists will have been anticipated 
 by an idea of God, which dates at least from the earliest 
 historic times ; and all the great results which can be 
 supposed possible when the truth is known, will have been 
 already accomplished by the idea. 
 
 If we were not allowed to hope for the future of our race 
 in regard to this great question ; if it were to be maintained 
 that it does not admit of demonstration, and that no con- 
 sistent scientific thinker can assent to any argument that 
 may be advanced in proof of a Creator : it would follow that 
 if there be a Creator, and surely the hypothesis will be 
 allowed us, He, the builder of our mind, has made it im- 
 possible for us to know with certainty that He exists. Let 
 us examine this hypothesis, which we claim to do, not merely 
 to find the issue of a particular line of reasoning, but because 
 the position of the materialists invites us to consider that as 
 possible which is not in itself inherently absurd, nay, which, 
 in view of certain considerations that may be alleged in its 
 favour, is not altogether improbable. 
 
 Accepting then hypothetically the conception of a distinct 
 and independent power, apart from Nature, the Original and 
 Providence of all other existence, we know absolutely nothing 
 
MODERN ATHEISM. 
 
 concerning Him. We are the only creatures who are capable 
 of conceiving an idea of God, and of reasoning upon that 
 idea ; and yet we are as much cut off from the knowledge of 
 His mind, using that word as expressing the highest type of 
 existence known to us, as other forms of animal life. All 
 intuitions and feelings wdiich, taking kindly to the idea of a 
 God, would at first seem to indicate that they were intended 
 to lead us to Him, must be inflexibly distrusted ; for, what- 
 ever account we may give of them, they were never meant to 
 inspire hopes of a knowledge w^hich is made impossible by 
 the constitution of our mind. But we have an idea of a 
 God ; and it must be further acknowledged that this idea has 
 come to the different races of mankind in much the same 
 manner. The impression of a causal force, intelligent and 
 supreme, has been, in forms more or less rudimentary, the 
 heritage of the common human mind from, at least, historic 
 periods. And if God had intended that we should certainly 
 know that He exists, instead of intending that we should not 
 know it, it is difficult to conceive how He could otherwise 
 have taught us the fact than by those modes of conveying an 
 impression of Himself which are the phenomena of nature, 
 and the mental susceptibilities by which such phenomena are 
 instinctively referred to a Creator. For, observe, this is 
 precisely the manner in which we learn other things that we 
 were certainly intended to know. We were formed, no 
 matter how, to live in successive generations ; and it is in 
 the order of nature that the people of each generation should 
 prosper in family and social life : that they should work in 
 individual duty and organic concert for the order, safety, and 
 happiness of the many. We are first guided to these obli- 
 gations by intuitions ; and then by registering our experiences 
 we formulate them into laws and institutions to give stability 
 to the teachings of nature, and to secure a perpetual obedience 
 
THE ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. 
 
 to her commands. This is the process by which families 
 expand into communities. The earliest phenomena of social 
 life impress ns at once as do the simple aspects of matter ; 
 and having certain feelings, such as love, caution, resentment, 
 and trust, answerable to the necessities of society, we gradu- 
 ally mature a system of mutual help which is the basis of all 
 forms of national existence. 
 
 This account of the origin of society is not discredited 
 by the condition of uncivilised races. Their tribal forms are 
 eccentric offshoots from the root of nations. There is no 
 speculation upon which we are so liable to err as the amount 
 of intelligence possessed by man in purely barbarian condi- 
 tions. It is only by a patient and wary observation, which 
 nothing but a residence among them will enable the inquirer 
 to make, that we can form a just judgment concerning those 
 remote races that live outside the boundary of civilisation. 
 If we follow the best authorities in this field of researcli, 
 than which no subject deserves more careful examination, we 
 shall find that underneath their grossest superstitions and 
 their monstrous excesses, there is a sentiment which culture 
 would have made noble, and an instinct which knowledge 
 would have made useful. Here then we become families and 
 nations by natural and universal feelings, impulses, and faculties. 
 The conditions in which they spring and act and the organism 
 they make for themselves, will necessarily produce varieties of 
 type ; for these are largely determined by climate, by num- 
 bers, and by opportunities of transit : yet when diverging 
 most widely from each other, when, at first sight, every trace 
 of identity has disappeared, the carefully renewed observation 
 will perceive the elementary forms of social and inter- 
 dependent life. Wherever you place human beings, wher- 
 ever you find them, society with its fellowships, its industries, 
 and its guards, is a development as inevitable as the produce 
 
lo MODERN ATHEISM. 
 
 of a seed. That produce may be a partial, or even total, 
 failure, — a contingency too common in the fortunes of seed ; 
 but whatever becomes of it, it is intended to grow, since there 
 is provision for growth in the structure of the grain itself. 
 
 Now if it can be shown that the notion of a Supreme God 
 has been formed by the same process as the notion of primal 
 natural states, that is to say, by the reciprocal action of 
 phenomena and intuitions, then, assuming the position of the 
 materialist, the logic of our analogy will lead us to the con- 
 clusion that we are taught by the framer of our mind to dis- 
 trust the impressions which would lead us to Himself, and as 
 implicitly to follow those wdiicli lead us to each other. 
 
 In pursuing this argument it will be our business to 
 examine the earliest rudiments of religious belief. The 
 remains of any primitive faith will serve our purpose ; for all 
 such relics belong to the argument. The field is too large to 
 be traversed in a lecture : but in making a selection from 
 many examples, we shall examine those religions which are 
 distinguished in two features, unquestionable antiquity, and 
 tlie trace of a cultivation sufficient to give authority to human 
 thought, and yet anterior to the age of expositors and systems. 
 It may be convenient for us to keep Biblical records in the 
 background, for the present. Excepting these authorities, our 
 most pertinent illustrations come from the original Vedas of 
 the Hindus. The antiquity of these writings is unimpeach- 
 able : but the conceptions embodied in them are older still, 
 leading us back even to the child days of the human race. 
 India is the birthplace of theistic speculation and intellectual 
 science. The philosophical systems of Europe have grown 
 from the seed-plots of the East. The familiar assumptions of 
 India become discoveries when they reach Germany and 
 France ; and accepted scientific doctrines by the time they 
 arrive in England. It is not my intention to discuss at 
 
VEDIC LITER A TUKE. 
 
 length the chronology of the Vedic era : much less does it 
 concern me to follow the development of Yedic faith into 
 later forms of popular mythology. I shall produce the earliest 
 religious thoughts of the earliest Aryan period. That period 
 within the present limits of research may not admit of 
 accurate computation. But as much as this is evident, that 
 in Vedic literature there are several strata of writing, distin- 
 guishing intervals of growth and change as plainly as varieties 
 of style and thought separate the Chaucer, Shakespeare, and 
 Wordsworth periods of English poetry. The oldest specimens 
 of Vedic composition are the original hymns : in fact these 
 and nothing else comprise the Vedas proper ; the other pro- 
 ductions that borrow the sacredness and authority of their 
 name beinf^, 1st, instructions and rubrics on the ritual of the 
 ancient invocations ; and, 2 ndly, commentaries and treatises to 
 elucidate their meaning. The date of these latter writings 
 carries us back to about 600 years before Christ ; and the 
 earlier period, when the ritualistic arrangement of the hymns 
 brought them into an order and system of w^orshi23, cannot be 
 later than 1000 years before the Christian era. As for the 
 hymns themselves, even they are divided into ancient and 
 modern : and probably the earliest of them were composed 
 3,500 years ago. Here are examples of this historical 
 element taken from the hymns of the Rig Veda. " Ye have 
 done great things, Maruts (winds), when our fathers' hymns 
 w^ere sung of old in your honour." ^ " They praised the pure 
 god with an ancient song." " Indra (Lord) who has grown 
 through ancient, middle, and modern hynms." ^ 
 
 Thanks to the munificence of the late East India Company, 
 a generosity which has been nobly sustained by the present 
 Government, and to the scholarship of Colebrooke, Wilson, 
 
 ^ R.V, vii. 56, 23, JMuir's Sanscrit Texts, part iii. 125. 
 ^ Ibid., pp. 128, 123. 
 
1 2 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 Mliller, and others, we have authentic texts of the Indian 
 Scriptures, and they teach — 
 
 1. The existence of a Supreme God. 
 
 It may be worth while to notice that the origin of the 
 Yedic hymns is always supposed to be revelation. The 
 manner of the revelation was a fruitful source of speculative 
 writing. The Hindu imagination found a congenial task in 
 conceiving how not merely the thoughts but the letters that 
 clothed them were brought from eternity into time. Passing 
 over the grotesque and absurd systems of inspiration founded 
 by subsequent writers, we may take the moderate pretensions 
 of the poets themselves. They tell us they fabricated the 
 hymns ; but the thoughts entered into them : as one of them 
 says, in a line of great beauty, 
 
 * ' When the voice entered into me, I gave it birth. " ^ 
 
 In language of this kind the sentiment of inspiration pervades 
 the primitive Muse of India, and is carried beyond what is 
 supposed to be the afflatus of mere poetical genius. The 
 Hindus understand the fervour of a natural fire as the source 
 of all genuine poetry: but the Vedas have a distinct and 
 lonely eminence, looking down upon all human compositions ; 
 they are God-born. The Bible among ourselves is not more 
 distinct from all literature, in the place assigned to its 
 supreme authority, than, in the estimation of the Hindus, are 
 the Vedas. In making our extracts from Vedic writings 
 to prove that the Aryan sages were led by meditation to 
 apprehend a Creator, we shall first cite from the hymns 
 themselves, and then subjoin quotations from the prose 
 chapters of the sacred books. 
 
 Here is an example of the early minds of the race feeling 
 after a First cause : 
 
 " Who knows exactly, and who shall in this world declare, 
 1 E.V. vii. 56, 23, \'bx\x' ^ Sanscrit Texts, part iii. 152. 
 
VEDIC TESTIMONY AGAINST ATHEISM. 13 
 
 whence and why this creation took place ? The gods are 
 subsequent to the production of this world : then who can 
 know whence it proceeded ? or whence this various world 
 arose ? or whether it uphold itself or not ? He who in the 
 hiohest heaven is the Kuler of this universe does indeed 
 
 o 
 
 know, but not another can possess that knowledge." ^ 
 
 In the following passage, the mind goes back into tlie 
 nothing that precedes entity ; and as it is led by a nobler 
 stimulus than curiosity, so it seems to take with it a diviner 
 light than mere reason : " There was no entity, nor non- 
 entity; no world, nor sky, nor aught above it. . . . Death 
 was not ; nor then was immortality ; nor distinction of day 
 or nioiit. But that breathed without afflation : . . . other 
 than Him, nothing existed which since has been. Darkness 
 there was : for this universe was enveloped with darkness, 
 and was undistinguishable like fluids mixed in waters : but 
 that mass, which was covered by the husk, was at length 
 produced by the power of contemplation. First desire was 
 formed in his mind : and that became the original productive 
 seed ; which the wise, recognising it by the intellect in their 
 hearts, distinguish, in nonentity, as the bond of entity." "-^ 
 It is a question we cannot discuss here, whether, and how 
 far, these meditations were indebted to traditions of what we 
 believe to be the true account. Their resemblance to each 
 other, whether coincident or organic, will equally serve the 
 argument which these extracts are intended to support. Of 
 the next quotations, especially the first, it might almost be 
 supposed that they were verses from a new translation of the 
 Book of Job : 
 
 ' ' Agni held the earth, 
 He established the heavens by truthful words." ^ 
 
 1 Colebrooke's Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus, p. 17. 
 
 2 Colebrooke's Essays, etc., 17. ^ Kig A'eda, i. 67, 3, Miiller. 
 
14 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 " Varuna stemmed asunder the wide fii'maments, 
 He lilted on high the bright and glorious heaven : 
 He stretched out apart the starry sky and the earth." ^ 
 
 "VYe now proceed to another part of the Eig Yeda, one of 
 the prose lectures bound up with the hymns, and a specimen 
 of one of the earliest attempts to expand into some detail what 
 was understood to be the condensed and oracular teaching 
 of the divine poetry. " Originally this (universe) was indeed 
 SOUL only : nothing else whatsoever existed, active (or 
 inactive). He thought, ' I will create worlds : ' thus He 
 created these various w^orlds ; w^ater, light, mortal (beings), 
 and the waters. That water is the (region) above the heaven, 
 which heaven upholds : the atmosphere comprises light ; the 
 earth is mortal ; and the regions below are the waters." 
 " He thought, ' These are indeed worlds : I will create guardians 
 of worlds.' Thus he drew from the waters and framed an 
 embodied being {ijuruslia)!' ^ The w^ord purmlia signifies 
 man. There follows a fantastic account of the processes by 
 wdiicli the organs of the human body were gathered into its 
 frame and symmetry, and their functions assigned to them ; 
 but these descriptions are beside our present purpose ; one 
 question put into the mouth of the great Framer when He 
 had finished the human body is worth our notice : " He (the 
 universal soul) reflected, ' How can this body exist without 
 me ? ' . . . Parting the suture He penetrated by this route." ^ 
 Who when they hear these wondei'ful divinings of patriarchal 
 paganism can help recalling the words, " And the Lord God 
 formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul " ? ^ 
 Another Vedic text is a remarkable affirmation of the unity 
 and omniscience of God, " Brahme is truth, the one immutable 
 Being. He is truth and everlasting knowledge." ^ 
 
 ' R.V. vii. 86, 1, Miiller. 2 Colebrooke's Essai/s, etc., 26. 
 
 3 Ibid., 28. •' Gen. ii. 7. ^ Ibid., 87. 
 
DIVININGS OF PAGANISM. 
 
 15 
 
 It is sufficiently plain, judging from these extracts, that 
 the Aryan idea of God was not the superstition of fear, but 
 the induction of reason. The mind following its intuitions, 
 and jointly with these the impressions awakened by the great 
 powers and appearances of nature, was compelled to place an 
 intelligent and omnipotent will behind the creation ; and only 
 one will. In attempting to construct a cosmogony, a science 
 to explain the plan of the creation of the universe, the mind 
 necessarily fabled its conceptions : selected from nature certain 
 images of vastness, brightness, and fecundity ; animated them 
 with inferior gods, and distributed these celestial ministers 
 over the domains of matter, and through the darker realms 
 of destiny. But it is always assumed that one Mind originated 
 all things. The polytheism of India is unknown in the 
 Vedas: for although the invocations addressed to different 
 elements might appear to countenance an impression of as 
 many deities ; yet as equal powers are attributed to all, as all 
 are highest, and mightiest, and wisest, it is probable that the 
 homage of the worshi^Dper was absorbed in the particular 
 aspect of the One God which he was for the time invokino- 
 Max Miiller on this important inquiry quotes the followino- 
 lines from the Eig Veda : 
 
 "They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni. . . . That 
 which is One the wise call it in divers manners." And ao-ain, 
 " Wise poets make the beautiful-winged, though he is one, 
 manifold by words." ^ 
 
 It is worthy of note that the authority of the Vedas on 
 the doctrine of the unity of God has not only survived the 
 later and more popular mythologies of Braminism, but this 
 doctrine actually underlies them ; and may be found in the 
 central thought of nearly all the superstitions of India. I 
 except Buddism, which is not properly a religion at all, and 
 
 1 Miiller's Lecture on the Vedas, p. 29. 
 
1 6 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 to which I shall return when we consider the ethical power 
 of a belief in the existence of God. I may add also a fact of 
 much significance, that the culture of the modern Hindu race 
 is in the direction of a more thorough investigation of Vedic 
 writings ; and that the first minds of the East are endeavour- 
 ing to purify the sources of Hindu Theism ; to go back 
 through the gross accumulations of metaphysics and legend 
 to the springs of Aryan thought. We know that they must 
 go even higher than Aryan thought : but those of us who are 
 striving to lead them unto living fountains of water, ivliere they 
 shall hwmjer no more, neither thirst any more, regard this 
 impatient desire for the purest truth they can find, as an 
 unequivocal and gladdening sign of an approaching renovation 
 for the people of India. If the limits of a lecture permitted 
 it, we might extend this examination of ancient faiths ; and 
 the result w"ould confirm the Vedic witness. The cosmogonies 
 of ancient Egypt, of Phenicia, of Chald^a, and of Persia, show 
 a curious resemblance to each other in the intuitions and 
 subsequent speculations of the earliest cultured races. There 
 is the same idea of an intelligent power, the author of all 
 beginnings, therefore Himself unproduced ; and the same 
 disposition to piece out a Genesis by exaggerations of known 
 prolific forces. 
 
 2. The Yedas teach, witli the doctrine of a Supreme God, 
 the immortality of the soul. As the intuition of causal force 
 suggested to Aryan thinkers the first mind, the qualities of 
 mind suggested indestructibility ; and with the conception of 
 it thus becfotten, the concurrent lonc^inj]^ for it confirmed their 
 faith. Their notion of the sovereignty of mind over matter 
 is an intensely interesting speculation ; and derived from an 
 idea that the human mind is a pattern of the di^dne. Tliey 
 imagined that by intense and continued meditation upon God, 
 or some kindred subject, a man might attain supernatural 
 
INTUITIONS OF IMMORTALITY, 17 
 
 power ; his will triumphing over material resistance with the 
 easy freedom of the Gocl he mused on. He could penetrate 
 the minds of other men, pierce the future, and suspend any 
 natural law that happened to be in his way. Before we speak 
 further of the philosophical mind of India which was subse- 
 quent to the Yedic muse, let us consider the earlier and more 
 authoritative teaching of the hymns themselves on the im- 
 mortality of the soul. Here is an extract from a prayer 
 addressed to Soma, a popular Vedic god with whom was the 
 gift of future felicity : — 
 
 1 . " Where there is eternal light, in the world where the 
 sun is placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, 
 Soma ! 
 
 2. "Wliere life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, 
 where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal ! 
 
 3. "Wliere there is happiness and delight, where joy and 
 pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, 
 there make me immortal ! " -^ 
 
 But there are strains in the Vedas which speak out not 
 only primitive impressions of God and the immateriality of 
 the soul, but those feelings of responsibility, of dependence, 
 and of guilty imperfection, which suppose a knowledge of sin 
 and the hope of pardon. The questionings of doubt in some 
 of these hymns are extremely touching : the refrain of one 
 of them is the inquiry, " Who is the God to whom we shall 
 offer our sacrifice ? " The reply is given in each verse ; and 
 yet the question as often returns, craving more illumination ; 
 while successive answers expatiate on the perfections which 
 invite confidence and hope. " He who gives life, whose shadow 
 is immortality, whose shadow is death. He to whom heaven 
 and earth, standing firm by His will, look up, trembling in- 
 wardly. He who alone is God, above all gods." The 
 
 1 RV. ix. 113, 7, Miiller. 
 
 B 
 
1 8 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 plaintiveness of the last verse is a natural effect of these 
 descriptions : " May He not destroy us, He the Creator of the 
 earth ; or He, the righteous, who created the heaven." -^ Our 
 last example of these prayers is an exquisite psalm which it 
 would be hard to match. There are many so-called Christian 
 hymns which are inferior in sense, in music, and in piety, to 
 the following Vedic litany : — 
 
 1. " Let me not yet, Varu?ia, enter into the house of clay ; 
 have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! 
 
 2. '•' If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the 
 wind ; have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! 
 
 3. " Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, 
 have I gone wrong ; have mercy, almighty, have mercy 1 
 
 4. " Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in 
 the midst of the waters ; have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! 
 
 5. "Whenever we men, Varu7ia, commit an offence 
 before the heavenly host, whenever we break the law through 
 thoughtlessness ; have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! " ^ 
 
 In these curious and recently discovered writings we have 
 the thoughts and the aspirations, in its infancy, of a race 
 whose descendants comprise the most powerful and accom- 
 plished nations of Europe and Asia. They were uttered at a 
 time when the human mind might be expected to receive the 
 truest impressions of nature. Science is the growth of culture. 
 The investigations that command exact results are very slowly 
 matured ; and men can live and prosper without them. But 
 everything concerning life itself, the sources of its purity, the 
 guardianship of its rights, the cultivation of its social obliga- 
 tions, and all the network of duties which fence and harmonise 
 its conduct, must begin when life begins. We look for these 
 in the twilight dawn of history, and we find them : and they 
 remain among the unchanged elements of human society. 
 ' R.V. X. 121, Miillcr. 2 ma, vii. 8, 9. 
 
BUDDISM. 19 
 
 Now the materialist, in dealing with these primitive lessons, 
 accei^ts those that inculcate the ethics of life, truth between 
 man and man, purity in families, obedience to parents, loyalty 
 to governments, and the charities of benevolence ; but he 
 repudiates those that lead the mind with equal directness 
 and authority to a Creator, to faith, and to worship : these 
 are the illusions of poetry ; admirable for their ingenuity and 
 elegance, but having no doctrinal value. But what gives 
 their warrant to ethical lessons ? The fact that they are the 
 suggestions of nature revised and enforced by experience. 
 May not as much be said to support a similar warrant for 
 the aspirations of faith ? Their teaching is equally primal, 
 clear, and unanimous. Again, if we are to distrust the ancient 
 theologies and to receive the ancient ethologies, how comes it 
 to pass that the latter, which expound the doctrines relating 
 to character, are for the most part built upon the former, which 
 are speculations relating to God ? There is no ethical system 
 of any repute, none which has been accepted by communities, 
 that has not borrowed its sanctions from a supposed Supreme 
 power. 
 
 It may surprise some of you that I dare venture such a 
 statement with Buddism in front of me. The Budda found 
 his ethics ; he did not produce them. He grafted them upon 
 a stock which he hoped had life ; but they perished in the 
 arctic atmosphere of atheism. I am bound to account for 
 the early prosperity of the system. In the age of the Budda, 
 Hinduism had lost its Vedic simplicity. It had become a 
 vast sacerdotal power. It crushed beneath the heel of its 
 tyranny the freedom of the intellect and the freedom of the 
 person. It arrogated the omnipotence of heaven, and ad- 
 ministered the destinies of fate. The complexion of every 
 man's inner and outer life, the condition of every man's family, 
 the produce of industry, the laws of fruitfulness, the visitations 
 
MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 of blight, the scourges of pestilence and war, the benedictions 
 of health and peace, were in the gift or the dispensing power 
 of the Bramins. They fattened upon the liberties of the 
 people. Budda was the Luther of a new movement ; and his 
 success is at once explained by the posture in which he found 
 the masses. They were waiting for the voice and arm of a 
 redeemer ; and Budda appeared. His rank commanded a 
 hearing, for he was a king's son : and not being a Bramin, it 
 gave the more emphasis to his defiance of Braminical impos- 
 ture. He perceived that that imposture was built upon 
 supposed supernatural powers ; he denied the existence of 
 such powers. The good sense and simplicity of his teaching 
 enabled men to look once more upon nature without fear : 
 the cloud had lost its demon, the lightning its vengeful aim ; 
 there was no terror outside the mind ; the mind was its own 
 universe, its own sun and stars, the arbiter of its own fate. 
 Everything depended upon the conduct of man himself. He 
 could make his own heaven, and his own hell. Here was 
 nature : the basis of a true philosophy. There was no dis- 
 tinction of caste and no inequality of sex. No wonder that 
 the new reformation, as its principles and purpose began to 
 be understood, was hailed by the victims of the insolent and 
 unsparing oppression of Braminical rule. Its propagation, 
 moreover, was a part of its system ; and in this feature it 
 differed from its rival. No other institution, with the single 
 exception of Christianity, ever raised itself above the frontier 
 walls of race and planned the conquest of the world ; and the 
 grand swiftness of its march through Burmah, Siam, Thibet, 
 China, and Japan, is due to the nature it carried with it ; to 
 the realism of its mission, restricting itself absolutely to the 
 improvement of man ; and to the catholicity of its spirit. It 
 tolerated all opinions and assimilated to itself all thought. 
 In China it accepted the ethics of Confucius ; in Japan it 
 
BUDDISM. 
 
 looked kindly upon the superstitions of Shintooism ; while its 
 rigorous morality commanded the reverence of thinkers and 
 invited the protection and co-operation of governments. But 
 as its early strength was in its ethical teaching, unencumbered 
 by the tyrannising fictions of idolatry, its weakness lay in the 
 repudiation of the theism from which in the first place its 
 ethics had been derived. It separated ethics from God ; and 
 the branch lived on, because it was full of vitality ; but cut 
 off from the root death was only a question of time. The 
 unnatural divorce was soon apparent in the attempt to sub- 
 stitute for God another being to whom the reverence of 
 believers should be offered, and by whose example and 
 sanctions the motives of obedience should be inspired : that 
 being was none other than Budda himself! The system 
 gathered to itself features which define a religion, and con- 
 cealed so effectually its original atheism that none but scholars 
 could discern it ; and even among these there are sects repre- 
 senting totally opposite views. As for the masses, they are 
 to this day worshippers of Budda, and possess a priesthood, a 
 ceremonial, and a sacred literature, which provide as com- 
 pletely for man's religious sympathies and hopes as Braminism 
 itself. It was its atheism which drove Buddism out of India, 
 and it has never returned ; nor will it ever again take root in 
 the land : for although it has acquired certain aspects which 
 correspond with the doctrines and ritual of Hinduism, its 
 modern additions are not wanted among a peox-)le already 
 "joined to idols;" and its ancient simplicity, even if this 
 could be recovered, has been condemned by history, whose 
 judgment will not soon be disturbed by a new trial. 
 
 It follows from all this that ]')uddism does not embarrass 
 but support our position, that the laws of conduct have been 
 found ineffective when not backed by the unseen but ever 
 present authority of a supernatural lawgiver. But if worsliip 
 
MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 is false and morals are true, why should the false be the in- 
 spiration and sustaining power of the true ? Is it not rather 
 probable that both are true, or that both are false ? For 
 what is w^orship ? Adoration of the power supjDosed to be 
 above us. It includes the contemplation of that which is 
 more excellent than ourselves : of that, indeed, w^hich is 
 perfect in excellence. We look out from our own limits upon 
 the illimitable ; from our own helplessness and exposure upon 
 an all-sheltering and paternal power : we think of all beauty 
 as originating here ; of all bounty as running down from this 
 source ; of all wisdom as springing from this unknown intelli- 
 gence ; of all destiny as forecast by this prescient authority. 
 The feelings awakened by these ideas prompt the prayer, the 
 trust, the dread, and the obedience of worship. Examine the 
 ethical qualities of these mental states. Take the single feel- 
 ing of dread, which I select because it is most readily despised 
 by the philosophy we are considering, I do not instance the 
 coarse terror of the barbarian worshipper ; but the fear of a 
 thoughtful faith ; the fear that imagines the displeasure of a 
 father, and not the thunderbolt of a demon. Can the human 
 character in the early season of its growth have a stronger 
 fence than that fear ? Can human laws, however ably classed 
 and strictly enforced, impose upon the disturbing elements of 
 society so effectual a restraint as the apprehension of an 
 omniscient and almighty Sovereign ? And when the advance- 
 ment of its moral culture raises the mind above the motive of 
 fear, and its own yearning for excellence becomes at once its 
 inspiration and its guard, what can so strongly invigorate that 
 yearning, and help the progress it aspires to command, as the 
 imagined presence and communion of the absolutely perfect 
 ]\Iind ? This faith, it must be remembered, does not take us 
 up into mystical and unreal abodes and leave us there : it 
 sends its inspiration through all the channels of conduct, and 
 
A THEISM AND MORALS. 23 
 
 strengthens equally every duty. Our citizen and family life 
 is as much indebted to it as our more personal and abstract 
 condition. Now if the worship of the Supreme has no 
 foundation in truth, we have here a vast amount of ethical 
 power, supporting and carrying forward into fuller meaning 
 the precepts of nature, springing from ideas not sanctioned br 
 nature ! But there is something to be added stranger still 
 Nature has proved herself unable to support her ethical 
 lessons without the help of the ideas which she is said to 
 disclaim. If I were to affirm that there has never been 
 morality without religion, it would not be easy to confute the 
 statement : but, as we have seen, it may be safely maintained 
 that there has never been a moral community without a 
 religious basis. As for individual instances of moral correct- 
 ness alleged to be the fruit of atheistic ethics, they may be, 
 for aught we know, the growth of traditional Christian 
 elements, or an early Christian bias.. Nothing can be more 
 illusive than the impression that the morality of an atheist is 
 the product of atheism. Morality is the conduct of habits, 
 not of opinions ; and although opinions may, in the long run, 
 create habits, good conduct may be settled in periodic duties 
 before opinions can be formed, as in childhood ; and an atheist 
 in principle may be a Christian in conduct. 
 
 To decide the question, which is gradually becoming the 
 question of questions, whether atheism can of itself produce 
 morality, we must suppose that its philosophy has had a fair 
 trial. If the Bible were to become a dead letter ; I do not 
 mean inoperative as a literature ; for that assumption is in- 
 conceivable ; but dead in the sense in which the elegant 
 paganism of Greece is dead, although its fictions still haunt 
 the region of taste, dead as a faith ; and the Jehovah of the 
 Old Testament were levelled to the Jove of the Iliad, and the 
 Christ of the Apostles were placed with the Socrates of Plato ; 
 
24 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 and men were to live and die for generations without an idea 
 of there being anything higher and nobler in the universe 
 than themselves, and without the expectation of another life ; 
 and if it were universally accepted that nature's blessings are 
 not bestowed but evolved by material laws ; that gratitude 
 for them is a false sentiment ; and that, apart from what it 
 pleases itself to ordain, human life has neither duties nor 
 responsibilities : if, I say, these atheistic principles and 
 doctrines ruled the belief and practice of mankind during a 
 period long enough to witness the extinction, if that were 
 possible, of the religions of the world, we might then be able 
 to determine whether the unmixed soil of atheism could grow 
 morality, the tree of life. And even at that time, if anything 
 good were left, it might be unsafe to attribute it to atheism : 
 for religion having rooted itself in man, it would be impossible 
 not to imagine that some tender branch of the felled tree yet 
 remained in the relics of a church, or in the memory of a 
 heart, to keep the old faiths alive. 
 
 But if the science of ethics be founded upon the laws of 
 our nature, and no thinker of the materialistic philosophy has 
 hesitated to affirm it ; and if the potency of this science is 
 very largely the inspiration of religion ; how is it possible to 
 resist the conclusion that religion is equally related to the 
 conditions of our being ? Morality is not the culture of ex- 
 perience following upon a revision or correction of the religious 
 impressions that marked the childhood of our race. We 
 have seen that the process was exactly the opposite. The 
 earliest conception of God was ethical. The traditions of 
 pre-historic periods were declarations of ethical law supposed 
 to proceed from the mouth of the Supreme. We are not just 
 now presuming that they did so originate, but merely asserting 
 that religion from the first has been a moral power. If there 
 be any significance in human conduct ; any gravity in the 
 
IVBA T IS MEANT B V HUMAN PROGRESS ? 25 
 
 principles of right and wrong ; if honesty, responsibility, and 
 order, and the suggestions of union to defend and maintain 
 these conditions, are the laws of the human mind ; if, to sum 
 up all in one sentence, there be anything that distinguishes 
 man from organisms of animal life, we are indebted to religion, 
 and to religion only, for its exposition and support. But this 
 statement of the natural union of religion and morality 
 receives weight from another consideration. It is not as if 
 religion had helped us at first, and we had grown to be 
 independent of its teaching and succour ; as if we had sur- 
 passed our alphabet and could lay our rudiments aside. ■ Our 
 first religious lessons are as difficult to master in these days 
 of advanced education as they were in the infancy of man- 
 kind ; as difficult, not in the dogmas which they offer to faith, 
 but in the standard which they present to practice. In the 
 march of the human mind we pass and throw into the rear 
 principles and ideas for which we have no further use. We 
 have not yet left behind even the earliest moral standard of 
 religion. It has always appeared to be near as a thing that 
 might be overtaken : but as we approach it, it lifts itself up 
 like the illusion of the traveller's horizon ; it is before us to- 
 day, as near and as distant as ever : 
 
 " So pleased at first, the towering Alps we try, 
 Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky ! 
 The eternal snows ajipear already past, 
 And the first clouds and mountains seem the last : 
 But those attained, we tremble to survey 
 The growing labours of the lengthened way ; 
 The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes, 
 Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise." 
 
 We commend this fact to their consideration who never 
 cease reminding us that the progress of the human race 
 means the falling behind of religious belief. Unless this 
 progress include a corresponding elevation of conduct, 
 progress in other excellencies, in science, in art, in wealth, 
 
26 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 in power, does not define the advancement of the race : these 
 -•attainments may accompany the going backward, the retro- 
 gression of the race : for man is not made great by what he 
 knows, but by how much he may be able to control. It is 
 the mastery of what otherwise would conquer him that makes 
 him great. A great government commands and utilises for 
 beneficent ends the forces of society : a great scientist attains 
 the consummation of science when he can bring out of its 
 obscurity some element or force and make it the servant of 
 mankind : and a man, considered as a human being in fellow- 
 ship by inheritance with those who have gone before, and by 
 sympathy and obligation with those who are contemporary 
 with him, and by transmission with those who will come after 
 him, is great in proportion to the ability by which he can 
 through the sheer force of his will subdue the animal energies 
 of his organisation, and create a guiding power for his life, 
 which in other creatures is secured by the irresponsible 
 mechanism of their nature. A man cannot be great, whatever 
 his intellectual attainments, if he cannot keep himself from 
 wrong-doing ; if he is unable to resist the incitements which 
 lead to the ruin of himself and others. We must leave our 
 opponents to account for the fact that man does not naturally 
 possess the controlling power which the structure of his 
 faculties assumes. We know that Christianity illuminates 
 the problem : but those who repudiate this oracle, whether 
 they decline the attempt to explain the anomaly or not, must 
 acknowledge that the training of the human faculties does not 
 necessarily imply the education of moral control. You may 
 have a race of thinkers and poets and artists, and neither 
 themselves nor their admirers one whit the better for their 
 culture : they may not contribute one degree of firmness to 
 the foundations of our safety as families and nations : nay, it 
 is possible to conceive that the thought they generate may 
 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 27 
 
 loosen the securities of order and morality. As a man sits 
 in his house in the possession of what Society has agreed to 
 defend for him, his personal safety, the honour of his wife, 
 the parental control of his children, the rights of his property, 
 the civil remedies available for disorders incident to the 
 fluctuations of intercourse, the sentiments of guardianship, of 
 obedience, of unselfish deference, by which his home becomes 
 a well-spring of the noblest happiness of which we are capable, 
 let him ask himself what proportion of these is due to our 
 knowledge of natural laws ; and whether they could be 
 entrusted to the protection of scientists and literary men ; 
 and whether it is conceivable that any condition equally noljle 
 could replace them ? 
 
 When it is taken for granted by men who assume the 
 direction of modern thought, that religious faith is yielding to 
 the demonstrations of exact knowledge, and will prove, like 
 other illusions, but a temporary possession of mankind, it is 
 time for us to consider what other moral power will take its 
 place. Now religious belief has never been worth anything 
 except in so far as it has helped the moral condition of the 
 world : and it has done this by rebuking and subduing the 
 natural selfishness of the human mind. It lias made men 
 live for each other, rather than for themselves : and by affirm- 
 ing man's immortality, it has set an estimate on human life 
 which has had a marked influence upon the jurisprudence of 
 nations. The nature and measure of this influence may be 
 inferred from the history of those governments which are 
 scarcely touclied by the authority of religion. We shall find, 
 with probably no exception, that in all countries human life 
 and human concerns are weighed together and reckoned to 
 have the same value : that if religion has not stamped upon 
 life the assay mark of immortality, it is worth just so much 
 and no more as it can bring to the State. It has no personal 
 
28 iMODERN ATHEISM. 
 
 sacredness ; and is covered by no shield except the precarious 
 defence of class-interests. Infancy is cheap; age is cheap ; 
 and the impotencies of poverty, instead of being a charge 
 upon the sympathy and care of the strong, are a burden to be 
 shaken ofif; and the tenderest, the grandest sentiments of our 
 nature die in the blight of selfishness. But where civil law 
 is based upon the fact that life is, in itself, a gift of infinite 
 responsibility, a corresponding value attaches to everything 
 that affects it ; and the slightest, the most fugitive human 
 affairs are admitted into the scale of public estimation. 
 England exceeds other nations in earnestness of religious 
 sentiment ; and nowhere is the life of man so sheltered as it 
 is here : it is too grand a possession to need the protection of 
 class or rank : it is taken as it is and folded up within the 
 provisions of the constitution because it is considered to be a 
 divine thing ; its freedom, its education, its morality, its 
 happiness, are regarded by the State in the light of a divine 
 trust. Materialists and a certain school of politicians may 
 laugh at this statement as a somewhat stale superstition. 
 The reply is close at hand, and cannot be refuted, that 
 whether it be a superstition or not, it is the true explanation 
 of the humanity, the equity, the power, and the majesty of 
 English law. 
 
 Let it then be remembered that when religious faith is left 
 behind, we abandon with it our supposed immortality, and 
 those sentiments of human worth and dignity inspired by it 
 which, as we have seen, so closely affect the humanity of 
 states ; w^e leave behind a divine law of right and wrong, 
 which by placing public morals upon immutable foundations 
 has saved us from the capricious standards of expediency : 
 we leave behind a certain class of thought which has been 
 the only intellectual food of the masses of civilised countries, 
 and which, by refining their emotions and absorbing and 
 
THE NEGATION OF FAITH. 29 
 
 elevating their leisure, has compensated their lack of culture 
 and made them readily amenable to law and accessible to 
 virtue. More than this ; we depart from those standards of 
 belief upon which rests the credibility of much of our history. 
 A spirit of suspicion will infect historical criticism, and 
 weaken the authority of experience : and that exquisite 
 arrangement which compensates for the limits of exactness by 
 making probability the ground of testimony, will be defeated, 
 and the generous faith between man and man so conducive to 
 the goodwill and business of society wdll be rudely shaken, 
 and perhaps overthrown. It may be supposed that in these 
 sentences I exaggerate the results of the negation of faith ; 
 that I am copying the images of fancy, instead of following 
 the steps and sequences of reasoning : but no man who shall 
 work out for himself the problem of the human race bereft 
 through a succession of ages of faith in God, will hastily dis- 
 miss these statements as improbable. I do not pretend that 
 with the expiration of faith, there will be the contemporary 
 extinction of everything belonging to faith. The glories of 
 the setting will linger when the luminary has disappeared : 
 but the declining orb must take its splendours with it, and in 
 the next watch not a trace of the day will be seen. 
 
 The materialistic philosophy has one reply to all this ; and 
 we admit that it is terribly conclusive : if the correct expound- 
 ing of nature should involve the gradual displacement of the 
 dogmas upon which religion is built, we may leave nature to 
 provide for conditions consequent upon her advancement. To 
 this unanswerable dictum we reverently submit. If religion 
 and science conduct us to diametrically opposite conclusions, 
 they cannot both be true. We confess, moreover, that religion 
 is faith in the unseen, and that science is exact knowledge : 
 and if philosophy can demonstrate the absurdity of any par- 
 ticular belief, it is our duty to renounce that belief, w^hatever 
 
30 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 the disavowal may cost us. The tone of scientific polemics 
 makes me suspect that our philosophic observers do not credit 
 us with the love of truth apart from the love of sect. Let us 
 hope that a pure desire for the truth and for the truth only 
 is not all on their side ; that some of us strive to follow her 
 leadings with a devotion as untainted by self as that of the 
 most enthusiastic scientists. And if they and we are simply 
 eager to discover that which is true, why should w^e enter the 
 arena of discussion in the spirit of adversaries, and with bitter- 
 ness and intolerance instead of arguments ? In former years 
 the scientific spirit was not less bold in its generalisations than 
 it is now : but it was modest in the tone of its researches ; 
 and it cannot yet afford to dispense with modesty. 
 
 We are compelled to add that the hardest school of theo- 
 logical dogmatists will not furnish better specimens of arrogance 
 than certain of our modern materialists. But neither in 
 theology nor in science will this temper help the onward 
 movement of truth. We may force a discussion by substitut- 
 ing dogma for reasoning, and assume a triumph in the language 
 of superiority and disdain. But this kind of progress is only 
 imaginary : we have to come back and do our work over again. 
 In the unquestionable victories of science we rejoice : and are 
 content to have our own note of admiration lost in the popular 
 acclaim : to be proud of its gains without, it may be, an accurate 
 estimate of their advantage. But w^e can discriminate between 
 science and speculation. When the materialist talks about 
 the ultimate atom, we know as much about that obscure 
 creature as he does : when he attempts to define force and 
 motion and space and ether, we know that he may as well 
 claim scientific precision for his dreams, as for an account of 
 properties which have hitherto eluded, and will for some time 
 to come elude, the keenest, the most patient, and the best 
 supported observation. Let it be understood once for all 
 
SCIENCE AND SPECULATION. 
 
 31 
 
 that we regard the labour of those who are reclaiming land 
 for truth from the illimitable wastes of the unknown as the 
 highest and most ennobling pursuit of man. Apart from the 
 success of scientific enterprise, the enterprise itself brings 
 infinite gain to the mind. But we know that one of the 
 dangers of a too eager chase is the mistaking the mirage of 
 our own fancy for the goal of our hopes. Suppose, for 
 example, we accept the doctrine of causation as taught by 
 the materialistic philosophy, which explains that we are 
 ignorant of any other principle of causation than that of 
 invariable succession : that simple antecedence is the definition 
 of a cause ; causal force being unknown to science. If upon 
 this ground the materialist denies the possibility of a miracle, 
 that is, an effect other than the ordinary sequences of nature, 
 and he supports his argument by affirming that such an 
 anomaly has never been known, his view is a presumption ; 
 a statement it is impossible to prove ; since it supposes an 
 extent of knowledge it is impossible for him to command. 
 Now religion, that form of it, at least, which has the firmest 
 hold upon the mind of the world, rests upon miracle. Dis- 
 prove the miracle, and the entire system vanishes in air. 
 There are men who affect to believe that Christianity without 
 the miracle is true. But we need not stop by the way to 
 assail this position which has not even the shadow of a 
 defence : for in seeking to unite theology and science, it 
 outrages both by sacrificing religion and common sense. We 
 must not shrink from asserting that in spite of the high moral 
 aims of the New Testament and the splendid literature of the 
 Old, if we deny their claim to the supernatural, we admit 
 their imposture. When the scientist affirms that in nature, 
 so far as men have been able to understand its laws, miraculous 
 innovations are unknown, we may believe him : he has de- 
 livered a scientific judgment. But when he insists upon the 
 
32 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 impossibility of a miracle, and maintains that no kind or 
 amount of testimony can make it credible, he is eminently 
 unscientific. It is a fact that Christianity exists : it is equally 
 true that it must stand or fall with the miracle upon which 
 it is based : it is no less certain that the history of the miracle 
 has been deemed sufficiently credible to warrant an impHcit 
 faith ; and that the moral power of the system built upon it 
 is due to that faith. If this great Christian deposit of doctrine 
 and life has done any good in the world, the world is indebted 
 to its supernatural pretensions. These are facts : and if a 
 miracle is impossible, they rest upon nothing and are w^ortli 
 nothing. 
 
 Again, in applying the law of causation, as thus explained, 
 to mental phenomena, the self or personality of man has been 
 denied. The ego has been resolved into passing groups of 
 psychical states ; and what we have considered as constituting 
 the responsibility of the will, the self-determining power which 
 arbitrates between contending suggestions and impulses, is a 
 purely mechanical victory in a conflict between two ideal 
 motor changes, one of which, from having a preponderating 
 inducement, becomes real. This sounds like trifling ; but it 
 goes under the name of science. If it be science, the whole 
 edifice of morals is a dream. We must dismiss the testimonies 
 of consciousness and the venerable associations of the future 
 life ; and I envy the sensibility of no man w^ho can part with 
 errors so precious without a pang. But, so far from belonging 
 in any sense of the term to science, the notion that the think- 
 ing entity in man, which is man, is a group of mental conditions 
 is simply the necessary close or sum of a psychological hypo- 
 thesis. If all the eminent thinkers of the day were united in 
 supporting this melancholy speculation, I should hesitate to 
 be put to death by an hypothesis, and against the verdict of 
 nearly all the thinking and wisdom of the past. But it so 
 
SCIENCE AND SPECULATION, 33 
 
 happens that in psychology there are nearly as many schools 
 as there are writers. And when in that finest and most subtle 
 region, human consciousness, which like the sea closes up the 
 furrow of the ship that passes through it, and is trackless to 
 every new adventurer, men pretend to have discovered the 
 exact position in nature of the mind, and when no two of 
 the explorers agree as to what they have discovered, it will 
 be equally prudent and scientific to keep nearer home, and to 
 abide, for the present, in the old anchorage of a human soul 
 that does not shift into new centres of obligation every 
 moment, but is accountable for its yesterdays and its to- 
 morrows. 
 
 This is our position : there is a sphere of which materialistic 
 science is mistress. She has won it by honest and patient toil : 
 she has so made it her own, that it can never be retaken from 
 her : she is adding to its area every year, and there need be 
 no limit to her conquests, and we hail the queen of an ever- 
 extending realm. But beyond that realm there lie problems 
 that escape the tests of scientific experiment ; questions it may 
 not be unuseful for science to consider, since they border her 
 own world : but when her followers affect to master them ; and 
 claim as belonging to her, and assured to her, what has never 
 been verified by those instruments of inspection which are the 
 weapons of her warfare ; they simply describe not her ground 
 at all, but the intangible untravelled region that surrounds it. 
 Much of that unworthy panic which recent philosophical specu- 
 lations have awakened in the Christian \\-orld, and nearly all 
 the mischief which a semi-philosophic literature has done to 
 the Christian sentiment of the age, have arisen from the habit 
 of confounding the discoveries with the guesses of science ; 
 and not considering that the guesses that presume the over- 
 throw of religion are not the conjectures of the present limits 
 of research, which may by and by turn out to be true, but 
 
34 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 the mere frolic of the scientific imagination, as when Professor 
 Tyndall tells us that by an intellectual necessity he crossed 
 the boundary of experience and discerned in matter " the 
 promise and potency of all terrestrial life." ^ In affirming 
 the claims of religion upon the credence of mankind, we 
 do not complain that their credibility should be examined 
 by every available test ; we do not regret that an accurate 
 and resolute criticism has dispelled some of the illusions which, 
 through the party enthusiasm and selfishness of certain 
 Christian men, have gathered about the traditions and faith 
 of the Church. Let every illusion depart ! Truth is stronger 
 when she is untrammelled and walks alone. But while we 
 dread no ordeal, whether the analysis of criticism, or the 
 inexorable explorations of time, we shall not, in dispensing 
 with dreams which have possibly invested the substance of 
 religion, accept as worthy of our concern the dreams of 
 philosophy. Let us on both sides have done with dreaming, 
 and Christianity and Science may be co-witnesses of the 
 truth ! 
 
 As against the position of Modern Atheism, that we cannot 
 know that there is a spiritual and personal God, we have 
 quoted the earliest non- Christian testimonies of the human 
 mind, delivered at a time when there was sufficient culture 
 to give authority to thought, and yet prior to the age of 
 expositions, systems, and schools. We have shown that the 
 simple phenomena of nature awakening the intuitions and 
 drawing out the reasoning of the primitive races, impressed 
 upon them two ideas : first, that a primal and intelligent Mind 
 originated the Universe ; secondly, that the thinking part of 
 man lives on after death. We have made it equally clear 
 that whether these ideas are true or not, they were apparently 
 derived from the same sources and formed by the same 
 
 ■^ Address at Belfast, p, 55. Longmans, 1874. 
 
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 35 
 
 process as other ideas which are true and have never been 
 questioned. And the argument that proves this unity of 
 source is the organic connection between religious faith which 
 is the subject of dispute, and the ethics of personal and 
 social duty which are not disputed. It has been shown 
 that theology in some form or other has always inspired the 
 morality of conduct : that where in any instance, notably in 
 Buddism, the two have not been equally obvious, a little 
 exploring below the surface has discovered their union. It 
 has been presumed that morality is the index and con- 
 summation of human progress ; and that the excellence of 
 everything should be measured by its contribution of help to 
 the culture of purer conduct in individuals and in States. 
 If in every past age and among every people the chief 
 agent in advancing this culture has been some kind of 
 religious belief, then, supposing all forms of religious belief 
 disappear, where are the principles by which human life 
 shall be guided, and the new inspiration by which our 
 struggles to attain the true and the good shall be sustained ? 
 If it be replied that transmitted habits and traditions, and 
 the body of ethical literature possessed by all educated 
 nations, and higher developments of human intelligence, will 
 continue to furnish a guarantee for moral progress : the 
 answer is not a little perplexing : first, this guarantee is 
 mainly composed of the religious sentiment impressed upon 
 the manners, laws, examples, and languages of a thousand 
 generations : secondly, if religion is not true now, it was 
 never true ; the religious sentiment was ever false ; and 
 the guarantee reckoned upon ought never to have been. 
 Moreover it has been clearly pointed out that if you leave 
 religion in the rear, and carry on morality, you cut a branch 
 from a stock, and the branch having no further base of life, 
 its decay is only a matter of time. 
 
36 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 This is the problem which stands in front of modern 
 atheism: the ethical necessities of the human race, the 
 homogeneous origin of religious impressions and ethical laws, 
 and the moral consequences of their threatened divorce. 
 
 But we have been brought to this conclusion respecting the 
 difficulties of atheism without having considered the claims 
 of Christianity at all. Whatever we have alleged against 
 materialism would remain in undiminished force if there 
 were no Christianity. Our references to Christian revelation 
 and Christian work have been incidental and inclusive. The 
 argument against atheism has been sustained by the rudiments 
 of religious thought ; the lispings of a child — devotion in the 
 cradle days of the world. And the fact that the pure morality 
 of these breathings has never yet been surpassed by the con- 
 duct of mankind, is of itself a presumption that atheism does 
 not mean an advancement but an abnormal condition of the 
 intellect. But if these rudiments and their elevating action 
 upon mankind are sufficient to discredit atheistic doctrines, 
 we have, as it seems to us, a demonstration of their absurdity 
 in the origin and history of the Christian faith. In our 
 review of other faiths, whatever testimony we have adduced 
 in support of a personal God, the immortality of the soul, and 
 the ethical power of religious belief, is the merest outline, a 
 rude draft, of Christian evidence ; valuable because of its 
 antiquity, its universality, and the independent character of its 
 witness ; but wanting in completeness of system, and in the 
 more important argument of historic development. The 
 primitive races stretched out their thoughts, as blind men put 
 out their hands to feel after an object which something within 
 them suggests to be near. They tell us what they pursued ; 
 what they hoped they had found. They believed that some- 
 where there was a greater, a purer, than themselves ; one 
 who could redeem tliem from frailty, and cover them in 
 
CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 37 
 
 danger. They were certainly baffled in their attempt to 
 image to themselves the Supreme Cause of all things, whose 
 existence they were compelled nevertheless to acknowledge ; 
 and they took refuge in anthropomorphic conceptions, and 
 laid the burden of their life upon subordinate divinities. 
 But of these divinities they always speak as if they were 
 simply a provision for the immediate wants of worship, until 
 the time, believed in by many, longed for by all, when a direct 
 revelation from the Hidden One Himself would satisfy the 
 reason of man and gladden the desire of nations. 
 
 ISTow if we examine the literature of the ancient faiths, and 
 extract what is most excellent and noble in their conceptions 
 of God, what is truest in their descriptions of man, what is 
 grandest in their ideal of human character ; and bring these 
 excerpta into parallelism with corresponding Christian revela- 
 tions, we have before us identity of origin and contrast in ex- 
 pression, such as we find between fossil remains of portions 
 of the human body discovered in different strata by the dili- 
 gence of geology, and the perfect living body of a man. In 
 the one case you put together such parts as you have found, 
 just enough to establish structural affinity, but, in the absence 
 of important pieces, with too many gaps to enable you to 
 determine questions of stature and race ; and in the other you 
 have the entire human frame, not artificially collected, but 
 grown in the matured symmetry of nature, in harmony with 
 all living things, perfect in the functions and embellishments 
 of life, and with the superb dignity of mind. Such is the 
 union and such the disparity between the scattered thoughts 
 of paganism and the coherent delineations of Christian 
 theology. 
 
 But the Christian conception of God, so rational in its 
 foundation, so purely spiritual in its nature, so consistent and 
 finished in its composition, is not a growth. We have spoken 
 
SS MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 at large in this lecture on rudimentary ideas of God. The 
 Christian doctrine is not the evolution of these elements. 
 These elements are parts of the disintegration of that doctrine. 
 From the first the Christian idea of the Supreme has been 
 perfect in the sense of being com^^lete. It found its exact 
 expression in the words of our Great Teacher, " God is a 
 spirit ; and they that ivorship Hiwj must worship Him in spirit 
 and in truth!' But this was the Hebrew idea long before the 
 birth of Jesus : and those who deny its supernatural origin 
 may explain why in the progressive culture of ages the Hebrew 
 thought, on a subject which has attracted to itself universal 
 inspection, and under circumstances more favourable to 
 development than any other idea, should have received no 
 addition within, at least, the historic memory of man. It is 
 not clearer than it was ; not more refined ; not more in 
 harmony with scientific positions. It stands out in the hemi- 
 sphere of knowledge like the sun ; touching and improving 
 all thought, but itself untouched. It has been accused of 
 anthropomorphism. If by this word is meant the metaphysical 
 necessity of conceiving of mind only as we are conscious of 
 mind ourselves, we cannot escape the charge. And how we 
 can think of matter except in so far as our own mind makes 
 us cognisant of its properties, is not easier to learn than how 
 so obvious a truism can invalidate the Christian idea of God. 
 But if it be affirmed that our conception is modelled upon a 
 human pattern by a process of exaggerating to infinity human 
 qualities, the allegation is baseless. The Biblical doctrine of 
 the spirituality of God is taught with the explicitness of 
 definition. When the scientist is driven by the logic of his 
 facts to a First Cause ; and the metaphysician by tlie logic of 
 his reasoning to the Absolute ; is their conception of the 
 mystery more in accord with the requirements of scientific 
 reasoning than St. Paul's Absolute : — '* dwelling in light 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD. 39 
 
 which no man can approach unto : whom no man hath seen 
 or can see " ? As for the human aspects of the Biblical con- 
 ception, they prevented it from receding into an abstraction 
 by accommodating its form to the limited conditions of the 
 worshipper, who was thus able to conceive of a personal God ; 
 and they prepared the world for the great mystery and glory 
 of time, God " manifest in the flesh." 
 
 And here let me remind those who impugn the deity of 
 Jesus, that, assuming for the moment that the union of the 
 infinite and the finite in one consciousness is thinkable, the 
 teaching and life of Jesus are not only commensurate with 
 what the human mind has ever conceived, under any hypo- 
 thesis, to be predicable of God, but they bring into light that 
 which no thought had ever been able to penetrate ; God's 
 relation to man. They accomplish what, humanly speaking, 
 is the greatest intellectual exploit known in the history of the 
 mind ; they bring the Supreme Spirit of the universe into 
 minute personal intercourse with all the races of men without 
 staining the conception by the slightest blemish of coarseness. 
 The " Our Father " of the Christian is, in the causal element 
 of the conception, as purely spiritual a thought as science ever 
 placed at the imagined ultima Thule of her analysis ; but the 
 personality which makes it a distinct existence to the 
 worshipper, and the attributes which exalt it to parental 
 authority, guardianship, and love, bring it unsullied into the 
 homes of the world, with all its grandeur, its purity, its 
 tenderness, and its unexampled teaching power ; connecting 
 the heavens which " declare the glory of God " with the inner 
 word of every man's conscience. Herein is the second and 
 greater argument for its supernatural origin ; its corresponding 
 ethical power ; a power in exact proportion to its original and 
 unchanging clearness ; and inexplicable upon any other ground 
 than that which we claim for it. You may dispute the form 
 
40 MODERN A THEISM. 
 
 of the conception : it may be anthropomorphic ; it may be 
 unthinkable ; it may be the dream of the first sleep of the 
 imagination ; you may shut us up in absolute limitations and 
 show that our reasoning cannot be sound ; but will you follow 
 us as we take this conception of God away from the debateable 
 ground of metaphysics into the practical life of the world ? 
 If it be the noblest function of knowledge to make that w^orld 
 better, to make human nature fair, not by putting anything 
 upon it, but by making it grow its own beauty by new laws 
 of purity and benevolence, and by hopes of illimitable progress, 
 has the operation of any knowledge accomplished so wide and 
 deep a regeneration of mankind as that of Christ's revelation 
 of " Our Father " ? And may we not add to this statement 
 that all knowledge which has been working in the same 
 direction is an imperfect apprehension of the truths of wdiich 
 Christianity is the perfect complement ? 
 
 In every age it has been, I will not say the pastime, but, a 
 serious task of the educated imagination to conceive a perfect 
 man, a perfect society, and a perfect government : and men 
 have been glad to escape for a while from the hard realities 
 of human failure, to find relief in the sublime reveries of the 
 muse, and to mingle with the pictured excellencies of poetry. 
 Yet the helplessness of the attempt to bring the ideal out of 
 dreamland and make it a living thing is as remarkable as the 
 ideal itself is noble. But Christianity embodies the vision ; 
 and in the bare practical human life of Jesus touches a purity 
 of which no muse ever dreamt. :N"o single life has been so 
 widely known and so keenly examined : and however diverse 
 the judgments of criticism on His supernatural claims, no man 
 qualifies his reverence for the morality of Jesus: no man 
 hesitates to accept the model of His life : no man expects to 
 see anotlier like Him. As for His teaching, its intense 
 illumination casts a liglit upon every moral question that 
 
THE ETHICAL POSITION OF JESUS. 41 
 
 earlier thinkers had left unanswered. Life had no meaning 
 for us until He explained it. It had been the wise man's 
 enigma and the statesman's despair. But He untwisted the 
 threads of the puzzle ; separated the glory from the shame ; 
 the true from the false ; the permanent from the fleeting. He 
 was the first to show that the imagination of excellence means 
 more than poetry ; that in human nature it means prophecy ; 
 and by fulfilling the prediction in Himself, He proved that 
 the prophet's hope never need be the prophet's shame. Let 
 me ask any student of His words and acts, and no one but a 
 student has the right of judgment, whether, for the guidance 
 of a man within the hidden world of himself, or in relation 
 to the world of human life without, there may not be found 
 in the teaching of Jesus every principle that human nature 
 can want to recover and perpetuate in all conceivable relations 
 and conditions, purity, happiness, and progress ; whether we 
 want anything that is not there ; and whether what all have 
 agreed to consider the best things we have, have not come 
 from there ? It is not that Christ has shed a light upon a 
 side or angle of life : His teaching envelopes us ; and every- 
 thing belonging to us grows into nobler proportions when it 
 happens to be quickened by His words. It will hardly be 
 denied by men of every school that the human mind has 
 wrought its highest moral achievements under His inspiration : 
 that the human character has touched an altitude unknown 
 in the history of men before He was known. 
 
 If there be anything left in the w^orld to inspire the hope 
 of better days to come ; anything to relieve the sight, as the 
 eye wanders over the surface of human life, torn up by the 
 wild lusts of the heart, and made hideous by crime and suffer- 
 ing ; where selfishness knows no pity, and sorrow no hope ; 
 where ignorance like the pall of a black cloud hides its bright 
 destiny from the mind, it is the active goodness of an army of 
 
42 MODERN ATHEISM. 
 
 workers in the world ; in organised bodies, in irregular forces, 
 in scattered units, remote from each other, unknown to each 
 other, sometimes denouncing each other; but all labouring to 
 lift up and bear away the human woes of the earth ; in 
 literature simplifying great principles of conduct, and circulat- 
 ing noble ideas ; in education, striving to cut off the entail of 
 depravity from the children of the poor, and to endow them 
 with a new freehold of knowledge and virtue ; in charity, in 
 countless ministries of alleviation and succour. 
 
 Let any man consider whence this goodness springs and 
 who sustains it ; and then let him measure the proportion of 
 it that comes from Christian sources and is worked by Christian 
 energies. Let him separate the knowledge, the benevolence, 
 the purity, and every operation that can be traced to Christ, 
 and then reckon up what is left. Let him consider the fences 
 of equity and peace, the strongholds of liberty and mercy, 
 which have been reared upon the basis of Christian doctrine. 
 Let him include in his review the unwritten accumulation of 
 eighteen centuries of Christian history, traditions, associations, 
 influences, manners, many of them too subtle for analysis and 
 definition, but no less playing their part in the formation of 
 personal and national character ; and, finally, let him conceive 
 what would be the condition of mankind if the doctrines, 
 institutions, and literature of Christianity, not as they have 
 been narrowed by bigotry, or alloyed with human and imper- 
 fect ideas, but in their own simple purity, were not opposed, 
 but allowed to work out their purpose and complete their 
 task within and upon every man, and every family and nation 
 of men : and then he may be able to educe the ethical position 
 of Jesus, and will discover that as a moral power in the earth, 
 that position is, in comparison with forces of the same class, 
 equally unapproachable and indispensable. 
 
 We will judge this great Teacher and Expounder of the 
 
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, 43 
 
 mystery of religion and philosophy, who brought the remote 
 abstraction of a First Cause into near and j)aternal fellowship 
 wdth men, I say we will judge Him, if you please, with the 
 tentative temper with which you deliver your scientific judg 
 ments. \Ye say, He is true, so far as we know : He is without 
 fault, so far as we know : the pretensions which He advanced 
 with reference to Himself have never been falsified, so far as 
 w^e know : and therefore we dare to claim for Him all that 
 He affirms to be His right. It would be a trespass equally 
 against science and charity, to suppose that He could be true 
 to us, and false to Himself. When He utters a word or per- 
 forms an act which we cannot reconcile with usage or nature, 
 w^e shall not allow our ignorance to make us hesitate to accept 
 it, unless we are cautioned by the experience of what we 
 already know of Him. We take this scientific canon with 
 us into the vast and only partially developed region of Christ's 
 mind and work. We ask that they may be explored as nature 
 is explored : that the student shall not repudiate mystery, but 
 knock at it and wait : that he shall not seek to verify a theory, 
 but begin his work with the spirit of a child who has no 
 theories, and patiently, earnestly, and honestly, make the 
 truth the goal of his research ; and having reached it, dare to 
 face the consequences of maintaining it. 
 
 Here then the conception of a personal God attains its 
 complete expression in the doctrine of Jesus ; and its cor- 
 responding ethical power in the circulation of that doctrine : 
 and neither the one nor the other can be explained from the 
 atheistic position of the materialist. You may start from 
 any premises within the ground of human nature and find 
 your way to the conclusion we have reached. But how have 
 we gained it ? 
 
 1. We have collected the theistic impressions of mankind. 
 
 2. We have shown that their antiquity, their similarity. 
 
44 MODERN ATHEISM. 
 
 and their imperial place in the motives, the restraints, and 
 the education of life, prove that they have a root in human 
 nature : for these are the signs that attest the truth of other 
 impressions which no one has ever doubted. To allege against 
 them that they convey no exact knowledge is an objection of 
 no weight, unless it can be shown that other impressions 
 convey exact knowledge : the fact being that exact knowledge 
 is unknown in human life. 
 
 3. We have observed that when the attempt has been made 
 to construct a system of life without a basis of theistic faith, 
 it has not been able to work in permanent separation from it ; 
 that the religious sentiment after awhile has recovered its 
 position and found its deity. 
 
 4. We have seen that within the manifold shapes which 
 religious belief has assumed, there has been a central notion, 
 in several instances a distinct idea, of one Supreme Mind, 
 the original of existence ; and that the influence of religion 
 upon morals has been in proportion to the clearness of this 
 particular conception : as if the mind attained its true position 
 when it ascended above intermediate powers and sought the 
 presence and sanctions of the last, the ultimate authority. 
 
 5. We have discovered that the hope of a future state has 
 been the natural corollary of faith in God : and that these 
 two doctrines, laying hold of the common belief, have created 
 sentiments of responsibility, mutual respect, and kindness, 
 which have inspired the statutes and spirit of governments, 
 and moulded the institutions and tinctured the manners and 
 speech of the people. 
 
 Lastly, in detecting elementary forms of faith, tracking 
 them to their source and then returning and following their 
 evolutionary processes into systems of belief, we have remarked 
 that whatever they discover to us of clearness in the proof of 
 their divinity, of value in their expositions of human nature, 
 
A THEISM NO PLA CE IN HUMAN NA TURE. 45 
 
 of power and triumph in their ethical service for mankind, is 
 found in its perfect condition and illustration in the religion 
 of Jesus : showing that they are not independent faiths, in 
 different stages of maturity and equally divine, but are related 
 in their imperfect germs to the tree of life, and destined to 
 have their crude nourishment superseded, as the branches of 
 that tree extend their arms and shake down their fruit and 
 their leaves for the sustenance and healing of the nations. 
 
 It follows from all this that whatever may be said for 
 Atheism, it has no place in man. If it is in our nature, to be 
 hereafter perfected, we should be able by this time to read 
 the prophecy of its ultimate maturity in some germinal forms 
 of life. Where are these signs of structural vitality ? If 
 atheism is destined to take charge of the universal mind, of 
 its aspirations, its sorrows, and its resources, we may expect 
 to see the indications of this sublime consummation in earHer 
 stages of growth. May we find them in any existing Govern- 
 ment ? As yet there is no nation that is ruled upon purely 
 atheistic principles. May we seek them in colleges and 
 schools ? As yet there is no educational institution which 
 apart from technical and scientific instruction teaches the 
 morals of life upon a professedly atheistic basis. May we 
 discover them in literature ? There are works which teach a 
 philosophy that excludes God : there are books inspired by 
 the atheistic spirit : but, throwing out of our estimate publica- 
 tions which no honest school of thought would care to adopt, 
 the productions of the sceptical school that seriously and 
 earnestly address themselves to the instruction and en- 
 lightened amusement of the public cannot as yet be said to 
 comprise a literature. Do these promises of the future reign 
 of atheism discover themselves in family life ? The question 
 is not, are there ungodly families ? but are there families 
 whose unity, culture, and happiness are founded upon the 
 
46 MODERN- A THEISM. 
 
 repudiation of religious belief ? If there are, do they repre- 
 sent a sufficient amount of solid result to take them out of 
 the category of experiments, of which we have known several 
 whose abnormal form and early death plainly showed that 
 nature never intended them to live ? Nay, atheism has no 
 living organism in family life ; and a system which has had 
 disciples and workers in every past age and in every land, 
 and is not found to-day among the reforming agencies of the 
 world, bears upon its unnatural aspects and upon its separa- 
 tion from the vitalities and harmonies of nature and of man, 
 the prophecy of ultimate extinction. It is a plant " which 
 my Father hath not planted," and shall be plucked up by 
 Him whose " memorial " is still with us and shall be, in ever 
 increasing ascendency, unto all generations ! 
 
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