men, married women and children, and the capture, for the soldiery, of the maidens !

As Judge Westbrook has said, "The low conception and gross representations of the character of God should put the blush upon the cheek of cannibalism itself."

The late Phineas T. Barnum (a thoroughly religious man) said, "The orthodox faith painted God as so revengeful a being that you could hardly distinguish the difference between God and the Devil."

Is it the "God of love" that we read of in Deut. xxviii, from the 15th verse-which sounds like the anathemas of the Pope of Rome?

"The God men make for men

A God impossible to common sense."

It is a singular fact that those whom Christians have termed Infidels are the very persons who (so far as they believed in a God) had the most exalted idea of Deity.

Thomas Paine's conception of God far transcends that of the orthodox Christian.

Lord Bacon says, "An ill opinion of God is worse than Atheism."

"Orthodoxy made God a capricious tyrant, and Infidelity sought relief by abolishing him." (N. Y. Herald.)

Col. Ingersoll said, "From the aspersions of the pulpit I would rescue the reputation of the Deity."

Whether there is a God or not, it is safe to say that the orthodox God does not exist.

The question recurs: Is there any God?

La Place says: "The telescope sweeps the skies without finding God." Lalande has said, "I have searched through the heavens, and nowhere have I found a trace of God."

This he denominates

Mr. T. B. Wakeman says: "There is no possible room anywhere for an extra-mundane God. The true, God is the totality of the correlated Universe." "monism," in which term he finds the philosophy of Bruno, Spinoza, Comte, and Haeckel,

I think that but comparatively few thoughtful, intelligent beings believe in a personality called God. There are those who believe in God as "that vast power which rules in the Universe in all things by law." (Hon. Andrew D. White.) Matthew Arnold says, "All things seem to us to have what we call a law of their being; whether we call this God or not, is a matter of choice." Rev. M. J. Savage says, "There are no laws of God except the natural laws of the universe.' Tennyson says: "God is law." John Fiske says, "God is not will, but law :" and Rev. William Wilberforce Newton says, "If law is God, then there is no personality, and if there is no personality then there is no will."

There is no consensus of opinion as to what is the definition of the term God. It is the most unmeaning of words. Besides the God of personality there is the God of immanence and the God of transcendence.

Among believers in the last of these may be included Francis Ellingwood Abbott, PH. D.; Dr. Robert G. Eccles; Prof. Lewis G. Jayne; Sir Wm. Hamilton (who says, "As a transcendental is an unconditioned being, God cannot be scientifically known ;") and Herbert Spencer (who says, "There is a power behind humanity and behind all things

Unknowable.")

. the

Believers in a God of immanence may include Rev. S. R. Calthorp, who says, Nature and God are the same;" Rev. J. W. Chadwick: "There are not God and nature-God is nature;" Goethe: "He who rises not high enough to see God and nature as one, knows neither;" Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D.: "God and nature are not dual. We have abandoned the carpenter conception of creation, and are substituting for it the far grander conception of a God immanent in nature;" Rev. Dr. Greer (of St. Bartholomew's Church): "God is immanent in all human life;" Alexander Pope : "All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.”

Are not these Pantheistic or Monistic, rather than Deistic or Theistic conceptions?

Every age, every nation, has had its God; differing only as human conceptions of Deity differ, but known under different names to the Norseman as Odin, to the Egyptian as Osiris, to the Phoenician as Baal, to the Babylonian as Belus, to the Persian as Ormuzd, to the Hindoo as Brahma, to the Greek as Zeus, to the Roman as Jupiter, to the Mohammedan as Allah, to the Jew as Jehovah, to the American Indian as the Great Spirit, to the African Pygmies as Yer, and to the Christian as God; all the same or similar creations of the imagination-for, of course, it is impossible for the finite to know the Infinite. Henry Frank (late of the Congregational Church at Jamestown, N. Y.) has said: "You ask me what God is. If I knew, I would be God."

Agnosticism can neither affirm nor deny the existence of God. It certainly cannot affirm the existence of that which it is impossible to demonstrate; and Rev. R. Heber Newton has said, "You cannot demonstrate God."

NONE

RELIGIOUS DECADENCE.

Through clouds of doubt and creeds of fear

A light is breaking, calm and clear."- Whittier.

JONE of the "signs of the times" are more conspicuous than the indications that the days of religion, or at least of orthodox or ecclesiastical or theological religion, are fast passing away. In no generation that is past has so much been accomplished in this regard as in the present. The air is filled with the boldest expressions of those who have revolted against the unreasoning theology which has held the minds of the people in its tyrannical grasp. The determination to exercise the reasoning faculties, to indulge in what is known as the "higher criticism," instead of permitting our intelligence to be subordinated to blind, unquestioning faith; together with the great discoveries in the sciences-in astronomy, in geology, in paleontology, in biology,-have well-nigh exterminated the theology of the first half of the century. The press (daily and weekly,) the monthly magazines, books innumerable, scientists, philosophers, scholars and theologians (of more or less liberal views,) are demanding a religion that invites discussion, that fears not investigation, and that is in the fullest accord with the latest discoveries of science.

"Criticism is at work with knife and fire. Let us cut down everything that is dead and harmful, every kind of dead orthodoxy, every species of effete ecclesiasticism." (Rev. Charles K. Briggs, D. D.)

Orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism are being undermined more by the discoveries of Darwin and Hæckel than by almost any other influence. The accepted theory (or rather recognized fact) of evolution teaches the rise of man from lower orders of

beings, in opposition to the rejected dogma of the fall of man. The argument adduced therefrom being that if there was no fall of man, then there was no Adamic sin; if no sin then no atonement—no eternal punishment; and so the whole theological structure totters to its fall.

"In the light of to-day" (says Rev. M. J. Savage,) the ‘plan of salvation' has no rational excuse for existing one day longer."

"Christianity is seriously weakened by the spirit of doubt and speculation so largely fostered by modern science. It has lost its hold on large numbers of people.”—(N. Y. Tribune.) "The scientists treat theology with contempt.

Scientific skepticism is invading the pulpit, and all that distinguishes the Bible from any treatise on moral philosophy is gradually being surrendered by leading theologians.

They are losing religion as well as theology." (Buchanan's Journal of Man.)

Every advanced student must know the characteristic spirit of the age to be a general revolt against traditional theories." (I. H. Hyslop in Princeton Review, Sept., 1888.)

Rev. Dr. A. J. F. Behrends demands that “theology—like science and philosophy-shall deal only with what can be accurately known."

ment.

Rev. R. Heber Newton says: "Faith has outlived the superstitious doctrines of the atonement and of eternal punishThe growth of knowledge has intensified the decay of ecclesiasticism. . . . The modern world is passing through the greatest change of intellectual outlook which has probably ever been experienced by man. . . . Men in ever-increasing numbers are exiling themselves from the homes of their fathers, because the priesthoods of Rome and of Protestantism allow them no freedom of thought and speech in the ancestral mansions, but only the slavery of superstition or the silence of cowardice."

Rev. Hugh Curry said at the Church Congress in Cleveland, O.: "The once popular notions regarding the character of the life eternal and of the resurrection of the dead, have