tles, were mere fictions."
{76} It is scarcely necessary to say that, in such argument as this, Dr.
Cumming is beating the air. He is meeting a hypothesis which no one
holds, and totally missing the real question. The only type of "infidel"
whose existence Dr. Cumming recognizes is that fossil personage who
"calls the Bible a lie and a forgery." He seems to be ignorant--or he
chooses to ignore the fact--that there is a large body of eminently
instructed and earnest men who regard the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
as a series of historical documents, to be dealt with according to the
rules of historical criticism, and that an equally large number of men,
who are not historical critics, find the dogmatic scheme built on the
letter of the Scriptures opposed to their profoundest moral convictions.
Dr. Cumming's infidel is a man who, because his life is vicious, tries to
convince himself that there is no God, and that Christianity is an
imposture, but who is all the while secretly conscious that he is
opposing the truth, and cannot help "letting out" admissions "that the
Bible is the Book of God." We are favored with the following "Creed of
the Infidel:"

"I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God, and God is
matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or not. I
believe also that the world was not made, but that the world made
itself, or that it had no beginning, and that it will last forever.
I believe that man is a beast; that the soul is the body, and that
the body is the soul; and that after death there is neither body nor
soul. I believe there is no religion, that _natural religion is the
only religion_, _and all religion unnatural_. I believe not in
Moses; I believe in the first philosophers. I believe not in the
evangelists; I believe in Chubb, Collins, Toland, Tindal, and Hobbes.
I believe in Lord Bolingbroke, and I believe not in St. Paul. I
believe not in revelation; _I believe in tradition_; _I believe in
the Talmud_; _I believe in the Koran_; I believe not in the Bible. I
believe in Socrates; I believe in Confucius; I believe in Mahomet; I
believe not in Christ. And lastly, _I believe_ in all unbelief."

The intellectual and moral monster whose creed is this complex web of
contradictions, is, moreover, according to Dr. Cumming, a being who
unites much simplicity and imbecility with his Satanic hardihood--much
ten