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and most monstrous beliefs can be conscientiously held by the weak and erring children of men. The absurdities of superstition make easily credible the sincerity of atheism. If one man can honestly believe that there are a thousand fantastic gods, another may honestly believe that there is no god. Without hesitation or reservation, therefore, I grant that Feuerbach fully meant what he said when he wrote, "There is no God; it is clear as the sun and as evident as the day that there is no God, and still more that there can be none;" Gustave Flourens when he penned these words, "Our enemy is God. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom. If mankind would make true progress, it must be on the basis of atheism ;" and Mr Bradlaugh when he told his audience, "My friend Mr Holyoake says, with regard to the words infidelity and atheism, that he objects to them because of the opprobrium which has gathered round them. The people who fight for old nationalities remember the words of opprobrium that have been heaped on their country and their cause, but only to fight to redeem cause and country from that opprobrium. They do not admit the opprobrium to be deserved, but they fight to show that the whole is a lie. And I maintain the opprobrium cast upon the word atheism is a lie. I believe atheists as a body to be men deserving respect, and I do not care what kind of character religious

men may put round the word atheist.

I would fight until men respect it." I know no reason for suspecting the sincerity of these men or of these statements, and therefore I do not suspect it.

There are open and avowed atheists whom we are bound to believe to be what they profess themselves to be. There are also some who disclaim atheism, yet who plainly teach it under other names. A large amount of the speculation which is called pantheistic might with equal propriety be called atheistic. Many materialists have repelled the charge of atheism, because they held matter to be endowed with eternal unchanging properties and powers; many positivists and secularists have fancied that they could not be properly called atheists because they did not undertake to prove that there is no God, but only to show that there is no reason for supposing that there is one; but, of course, belief in the eternity of matter and motion is not belief in the existence of God, and atheism is not only the belief that God's existence can be disproved, but also the belief that it cannot be proved. We have no desire to attach to any man a name which he dislikes, but a regard to truth forbids us to concede that atheism only exists where it is avowed.

Atheists have seldom undertaken to do more than to refute the reasons adduced in favour of belief in God. They have rarely pretended to

prove that there is no God; they have maintained that the existence of God cannot be established, but not that His non-existence can be established; they have tried to justify their unbelief, but they have not sought to lay a foundation for disbelief. And the reason is obvious. It is proverbially difficult to prove a negative, and there can be no negative so difficult to prove as that there is no God. Were a man to be landed on an unknown island, the print of a foot, a shell, a feather, a scratch on the bark of a tree, the perforation or indentation or upheaval of a little earth, would be sufficient to show him that some living creature had been there; but he would require to traverse the whole island, and examine every nook and corner, every object and every inch of space in it, before he was entitled to affirm that no living creature had been there. The larger the territory to be traversed and examined, the more difficult would it necessarily be to show that it had not a single animal inhabitant. So to show that there is a God may be very easy, but to prove that there is certainly none must be extremely difficult, if not impossible. There may be as many witnesses to God's existence as there are creatures in the whole compass of heaven and earth, but before we can be sure that nothing testifies to His existence, we must know all things. The territory which has in this case to be surveyed and investigated is the

universe in all its length and breadth; it is eternal time and boundless space, with all the events which have occurred in time, and all the objects which occupy space. Before a man can be warranted to affirm that nowhere throughout all this territory is there any trace of God's existence, he must have seen it all and comprehended it all, which would require omnipresence and omniscience, or, in other words, would imply that he is himself God.

Foster and Chalmers have so admirably presented this argument in celebrated passages of their writings that it is unnecessary to dwell upon it further.1 It has only been attempted to be refuted by an author who has fallen into singular mistakes as to its nature. Mr Holyoake fancies. that it turns upon an arbitrary use of the words "denial" and "knowledge." 'knowledge." There is not the slightest foundation for such a notion. The word denial, and even all the sentences which contain it, might be deleted without the argument losing a particle of its force. The word knowledge is employed in its ordinary and most general signification. The knowledge of the eyesight is no more demanded of the atheist for his negation than it is alleged by the theist for his affirmation. The whole argument turns simply on the manifest and indubitable difference between proving an affirma1 See Appendix II.

tive and proving a negative. From that difference it follows necessarily that the inference that there is a God may be warranted by a very limited knowledge of nature, but that the inference that there is no God can only be warranted by a complete knowledge of nature. If the author mentioned had not thoroughly misconceived the character of the argument he would never have imagined that it could be thus refuted by inversion. "The wonder," he says, "turns on the great process by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence which can know that there is a God. What powers, what lights are requisite for this attainment! This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity, which must therefore be possessed by the theist while they are pretended to be sought. 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 nature. independent of Deity, by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be the eternal source of all life. If he is not himself the chief agent in the universe, and does not know that God is so-that which is so may be the eternal and independent element which animates nature. If the theist is not in absolute possession of all the propositions which constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be,

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