tively to refuse that a God may be--but he insists that He has not discovered Himself, whether by the utterance of His voice in audible revelation or by the impress of His hand upon visible nature. His verdict on the doctrine of a God is only that it is not proven. It is not that it is disproven. He is but an Atheist. He is not an Antitheist.

6. Now there is one consideration, which affords the inquirer a singularly clear and commanding position, at the outset of this great question. It is this. We cannot, without a glaring contravention to all the principles of the experimental philosophy, recede to a further distance from the doctrine of a God, than to the position of simple atheism. We do not need to take our departure from any point further back than this, in the region of antitheism; for that region cannot possibly be entered by us but by an act of tremendous presumption, which it were premature to denounce as impious, but which we have the authority of all modern science for denouncing as unphilosophical. We can figure a rigidly Baconian mind, of a cast so slow and cautious and hesitating, as to demand more of proof ere it gave its conviction to the doctrine that there was absolutely and certainly a God. But, in virtue of these very attributes, would it, if a sincere and consistent mind, be at least equally slow in giving its conviction to the doctrine that there was absolutely and certainly not a God. Such a mind would be in a state neither for assertion nor for denial upon this subject. It would settle in ignorance or unbelief which is quite another thing from disbelief. The

place it occupied would be some mid-way region of scepticism and if it felt unwarranted from any evidence before it that God is, it would at the very least feel equally unwarranted to affirm that God is not. To make this palpable, we have only to contrast the two intellectual states, not of theism and atheism, but of theism and antitheism-along with the two processes, by which alone, we can be logically and legitimately led to them.

7. To be able to say then that there is a God, we may have only to look abroad on some definite territory, and point to the vestiges that are given of His power and His presence somewhere. Το be able to say that there is no God, we must walk the whole expanse of infinity, and ascertain by observation, that such vestiges are to be found nowhere. Grant that no trace of Him can be discerned in that quarter of contemplation, which our puny optics have explored-does it follow, that, throughout all immensity, a Being with the essence and sovereignty of a God is nowhere to be found? Because through our loopholes of communication with that small portion of external nature which is before us, we have not seen or ascertained a God-must we therefore conclude of every unknown and untrodden vastness in this illimitable universe, that no Divinity is there ?Or because, through the brief successions of our little day, these heavens have not once broken silence, is it therefore for us to speak to all the periods of that eternity which is behind us; and to say, that never hath a God come forth with the unequivocal tokens of His existence? Ere we can

-we must have seen, on

say that there is a God-w that portion of Nature to which we have access, the print of His footsteps; or have had direct intimation from Himself; or been satisfied by the authentic memorials of His converse with our species in other days. But ere we can say that there is no God-we must have roamed over all nature, and seen that no mark of a Divine footstep was there; and we must have gotten intimacy with every existent spirit in the universe, and learned from each, that never did a revelation of the Deity visit him; and we must have searched, not into the records of one solitary planet, but into the archives of all worlds, and thence gathered, that, throughout the wide realms of immensity, not one exhibition of a reigning and living God ever has been made. Atheism might plead a lack of evidence within its own field of observation. But antitheism pronounces both upon the things which are, and the things which are not within that field. It breaks forth and beyond all those limits, that have been prescribed to man's excursive spirit, by the sound philosophy of experience; and by a presumption the most tremendous, even the usurpation of all space and of all time, it affirms that there is no God. To make this out, we should need to travel abroad over the surrounding universe till we had exhausted it, and to search backward through all the hidden recesses of eternity; to traverse in every direction the plains of infinitude, and sweep the outskirts of that space which is itself interminable; and then bring back to this little world of ours, the report of a universal blank, wherein we had not

met with one manifestation or one movement of a presiding God. For man not to know of a God, he has only to sink beneath the level of our common nature. But to deny him, he must be a God himself. He must arrogate the ubiquity and omniscience of the Godhead.*

8. It affords a firm outset to this investigation, that we cannot recede a greater way from the doctrine to be investigated, than to the simple point of ignorance or unbelief. We cannot, without making inroad on the soundest principles of evidence, move one step back from this, to the region of disbelief. We can figure an inquirer taking up his position in midway atheism. But he cannot, without defiance to the whole principle and philosophy of evidence, make aggression thence on the side of antitheism. There is a clear intellectual

This idea has been powerfully rendered by Foster in the following passage extracted from one of his essays:

"The wonder turns on the great process, by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence that can know there is no God. What ages and what lights are requisite for this attainment? This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the Universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not absolutely know every agent in the Universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent in the universe, and does not know what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be a God. If he does not know every thing that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God. Thus unless he knows all things, that is, precludes another Deity by being one himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects, does not exist."

principle, which forbids his proceeding in that direction; and there is another principle equally clear, though not an intellectual but a moral one, which urges him, if not to move, at least to look in the opposite direction. We are not asking him, situated where he is, to believe in God. For the time being, we as little expect a friendly as we desire a hostile decision upon the question. Our only demand for the present is, that he shall entertain the question. And to enforce the demand, we think that an effective appeal might be made to his own moral nature. We suppose him still to be an atheist, but no more than an atheist-for, in all right Baconian logic, the very farthest remove from theism, at which he or any man can be placed by the lack of evidence for a God, is at the point of simple neutrality. We might well assume this point, as the utmost possible extreme of alienation from the doctrine of a Creator, to which the mind of a creature can in any circumstances be legitimately carried. We cannot move from it, in the direction towards antitheism, without violence to all that is just in philosophy; and we might therefore commence with inquiring, whether, in this lowest state of information and proof upon the question, there can be any thing assigned, which should lead us to move, or at least to look in the opposite direction.

9. In the utter destitution, for the present, of any argument, or even semblance of argument, that a God is there is, perhaps, a certain duteous movement which the mind ought to take, on the bare suggestion that a God may be. An object