if there is, He must be above His highest creature,
but--is there such a being? "The ground," says the Rev. Charles
Voysey, "on which our belief in God rests is man. Man, parent of
Bibles and Churches, inspirer of all good thoughts and good deeds.
Man, the masterpiece of God's thought on earth. Man, the text-book of
all spiritual knowledge. Neither miraculous nor infallible, man is
nevertheless the only trustworthy record of the Divine mind in things
pertaining to God. Man's reason, conscience, and affections are the
only true revelation of his Maker." But what if God were only man's
own image reflected in the mirror of man's mind? What if man were the
creator, not the revelation of his God?

It was inevitable that such thoughts should arise after the more
palpably indefensible doctrines of Christianity had been discarded.
Once encourage the human mind to think, and bounds to the thinking can
never again be set by authority. Once challenge traditional beliefs,
and the challenge will ring on every shield which is hanging in the
intellectual arena. Around me was the atmosphere of conflict, and,
freed from its long repression, my mind leapt up to share in the
strife with a joy in the intellectual tumult, the intellectual strain.

I often attended South Place Chapel, where Moncure D. Conway was then
preaching, and discussion with him did something towards widening my
views on the deeper religious problems; I re-read Dean Mansel's
"Bampton Lectures," and they did much towards turning me in the
direction of Atheism; I re-read Mill's "Examination of Sir William
Hamilton's Philosophy," and studied carefully Comte's "Philosophie
Positive." Gradually I recognised the limitations of human intelligence
and its incapacity for understanding the nature of God, presented as
infinite and absolute; I had given up the use of prayer as a
blasphemous absurdity, since an all-wise God could not need my
suggestions, nor an all-good God require my promptings. But God fades
out of the daily life of those who never pray; a personal God who is
not a Providence is a superfluity; when from the heaven does not smile
a listening Father, it soon becomes an empty space, whence resounds no
echo of man's cry. I could then reach no loftier conception of the
Divine than that offered by the orthodox, and that broke hopelessly
away as I analysed it.

At last I said to Mr. Scott, "Mr. Scott, may I write a tract on the
nature and existence of God?"

He gl