has become
in the hands of Mr. Combe a plausible pretext for denying a special
Providence and the efficacy of prayer; and the mere fact that these
doctrines have been applied to such different and even opposite uses, is
a sufficient proof of itself that they are not in their own nature
essentially atheistic, and that they should be carefully discriminated
from the systems with which they have been occasionally associated. We
are not entitled to identify them with Atheism, in the case of those by
whom Atheism is explicitly disclaimed; and yet there may be such an
apparent connection between the two, and such a tendency in the human
mind to pass from the one to the other, as may afford a sufficient
reason for examining these cognate doctrines, each on its proper merits,
for defining the sense in which they should be severally understood, for
estimating the evidence which may be adduced for or against them
individually, and for showing in what way, and to what extent, they may
have a legitimate bearing on the grounds of our Theistic belief. For
this reason, we shall bring under review, not only several systems of
avowed Atheism, but also various theories, not necessarily atheistic,
which have been applied to the support and defence of Atheism, and which
have a tendency, as thus applied, to induce an irreligious frame of
mind.

The _causes and springs of Atheism_ may easily be distinguished from
_the reasons_ on which it is founded. In the present state of human
nature, there is _a permanent cause_ which is abundantly sufficient to
account for this species of unbelief, notwithstanding all the evidence
which Nature affords of the being, perfections, and providence of God.
Our Lord explained in a single sentence the whole Philosophy of
Unbelief, when he said that "men loved the darkness rather than the
light, because their deeds are evil; for whoso doeth evil hateth the
light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved."
No thoughtful man can seriously reflect on his own conscious experience,
without discovering, in the disordered state of his moral nature, a
reason which sufficiently explains his natural aversion from God; he
finds _there_ an evidence, which he can neither overlook nor deny, of
his own personal turpitude and guilt; he is self-convinced and
self-condemned at the bar of his own conscience; he remembers with
remorse and shame many cases of actual transgression in which he
resisted the dict