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emphasize the fact that disbelief in the existence o f a Divine Being is not equiv alent to a demonstration that there is ncy God. 2. Such a demonstration is from the nature o f the case impossible. Here again it may be true as Kant contends that rea son cannot demonstrate (that is, by logic) the existence o f God; but it is equally true, as the same philosopher admits, that rea son can just as little disprove the existence o f God. It was well observed by thp late Prof. Calderwood o f Edinburgh University that “the divine existence is a truth so plain that it needs no proof, as it is a truth so high that it admits o f none.” But the situation is altered when it comes to a positive denial o f that existence. The idea Of God once formed in the mind, whether as an intuition or as a deduction, cannot be laid aside without convincing evidence that it is delusive and unreal. And such evidence canhqt be produced. As Dr. Chalmers long ago observed, before one can positively assert that there is no God, he must arrogate to himself the wisdom and ubiquity o f God. He must explore the entire circuit o f the universe to be sure that no God is there. He must have inter rogated all the generations o f mankind and all the hierarchies o f heaven to be cer tain they had never heard o f a God. In short, as Chalmers puts it, “ For màn not to know .God, he has only to sink beneath thè level o f our common nature. But to deny God he must be God himself.” 3. Denial of the divine existence is,not warranted by inability to discern traces of God’s presence in the universe. Prof. Huxley, who once described himself in a letter to Charles Kingsley as “ exactly what the Christian world called, and, so far as he could judge, was justified in call ing him, an atheist and infidel,” appeared to think it was. “I cannot see,” he wrote, “ one shadow or tittle o f evidence that the Great Unknown underlying the phenomena o f the universe stands to us in the relation o f a Father, loves us- and cares for us as Christianity asserts.” Blatchford also with
equal emphasis affirms: “I cannot believe that God is a personal God who interferes in human affairs. I cannot see in science, or in experience, or in history, any signs o f such a God or o f such intervention.” Neither o f these writers, however, it may be presumed, would on reflection advance their incapacity to perceive the footprints or hear the voices o f the Creator as proof that no Creator existed,, any more than a blind man would maintain there was no sun because he could not see it, or a deaf man would contend there was no sound because he never heard it. The incapacity o f Huxley and Blatchford to either see or hear God may, and no doubt does, serve as an explanation o f their atheistical’ creed, but assuredly it is no justification o f the same, since a profounder reasoner than either has said: “ The invisible things of God since the creation o f the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity; so that they [who believe not] are without excuse.” 4. The majority of mankind, not in Christian countries only, but also in hea then lands, from the beginning o f the world onward, have believed in the exist ence o f a Supreme Being. They may fre quently, as Paul says, have “changed the glory o f the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts and creep ing things;” but deeply seated in their natures, debased though these were by sin, lay the conception o f a Superhuman Power to whom they owed allegience and whose favor was indispensable to their happiness. It was a saying o f Plutarch that in his day a man might travel the world over with out finding a city without temples and Gods; in our day isolated cases have been cited o f tribes-—the Andaman Islanders by Sir John Lubbock, and the Fuegians, by Fitzroy—who have exhibited no signs that they possessed a knowledge either o f God or o f religion. But it is at least open to question , whether the investigators 'on whose testimony such instances are ad-
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