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"He was perfectly satisfied that there was no God at present, but he believed there would be one by-and-by ; for as the organization of the universe perfected itself, a universal mind, he argued, would be the result. This he called the system of progressive nature.”—Southey.

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"But what I have to tell you positively is, that a Spirit does actually exist which teaches the ant her path, the bird her building, and men, in an instinctive and marvellous way, whatever lovely arts and noble deeds are possible to them. Without it you can do no good thing. To the grief of it you can do many bad ones. In the possession of it is your peace and your power."Ruskin.

CHAPTER I.

THE RIGHT OF SEARCH.

"GOD created man"? No such thing! The monads developed him. "The heavens declare the glory of God"? Far from it: "they declare only the glory of the astronomer!" "We have now no need of the hypothesis of God."

These utterances, and such as these, startling alike to reverence and to faith, are the merest common places of modern agnosticism. Instead of being, as once they were regarded, the terminus ad quem, the ultimate goal, to which unbelief was tending, they have long since been left behind as a mere terminus à quo, a temporary station for a new point of departure. The scepticism which doubted has given place to the dogmatism which denies. "Honest doubt" has been supplanted by the clamour of a positive self-assertion. A positivism of which Comte knew nothing has usurped the authority, while renouncing the functions, of scientific enquiry.

In a word, Agnosticism is no more, and Gnosticism reigns in its stead.

Agnosticism made candid confession of its ignorance. Gnosticism parades its pretensions to knowledge. The former did not know: the latter is quite sure. The Divine existence is now declared to be not only unnecessary; it is absolutely unreal. God has no existence, even hypothetically, except as the creature of the human imagination. The hand may well tremble that writes it, and the ears may tingle that hear, yet it has been both written and said-in modes that demand more attention than they have hitherto received-There is no God! except such as man has made. "The dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure-of Him who made all gods and shall unmake them."1

Who then is He, this "grander and nobler figure," this great and only potentate "who made all gods and shall unmake them "? this "human" who dethrones "the superhuman deity"? It is man himself. "From the dim

1 Professor Clifford: "The Ethics of Religion,” in The Fortnightly Review, vol. xxii. New series, p. 52.

dawn of history, and from the inmost depth of every soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says, 'Before Jehovah was, I am !'" 1

And yet, this "Man our father," was once an Ape: and, before that, "a jelly-bag." That jelly-bag (which "made all gods and shall unmake them") sucking in water and sticking to a stone, has advanced to its present august condition by "a principle of development" and "a process of evolution." It is true indeed

that the principle is one which nobody has ever proved, and the process is one which nobody has ever witnessed; but woe to the unlucky wight who dares to doubt their validity, or who fails to recognise in "Mr. Charles Darwin, the Abraham of scientific men." 2

"Most of you," says Professor Tyndall, "have been forced to listen to the outcries and denunciations which rang discordant through the land for some years after the publication of Mr. Darwin's 'Origin of Species.' Well, the world-even the clerical word-has for the

1 Professor Clifford: "The Ethics of Religion," in The Fortnightly Review, vol. xxii. New series, p. 52. Vide infrà: Appendix, Note A.

2 Prof. Tyndall : "Science and Man," in The Fortnightly Review, vol. xxii. New series, p. 615.

most part settled down in the belief that Mr. Darwin's book simply reflects the truth of Nature that we who are now 'foremost in the files of time' have come to the front through almost endless stages of promotion from lower to higher forms of life." 1

"The most part": but what of the rest, the remaining part? Let it stand in awe. If it cannot be convinced it can be denounced. And it is denounced accordingly. It is more base and stupid than-"even the clerical world." He who belongs to it is ipso facto stigmatized as ignorant and incompetent. He is "unstable

993 66 a brawler and a clown." 4

and weak,"

1 Prof. Tyndall: "Science and Man," in The Fortnightly Review, vol. xxii. New series, p. 611.

2 The great and venerated name of Von Baer is associated by Haeckel with the idea of “harmless senile garrulity." Adolf Bastian is a "Privy Councillor of Confusion"; Du Bois-Raymond is a "rhetorical phrasespinner," if not a Professor of Voluntary Ignorance ; while Carl Semper is a—a person regardless of truth, expressed in a brief word not usually heard among gentlemen. "Haeckel," says Dr. Elam, "has probably never heard of the insignificant names of Owen, Mivart, and Agassiz, or they would doubtless have been remembered in the catalogue of wretched smatterers who have come under his signal disapproval.”

3 Prof. Tyndall's

Longmans, 1874, p. 63.

"Address delivered at Belfast."

4 Fortnightly Review, vol. xxii. p. 614.

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