It would be an unprofitable and thankless undertaking, and one for which we have not here the time, for us to attempt regularly to refute the innumerable non-Biblical conceptions of God which have, during the history of philosophy and of false religion, appeared; moreover, our task just now is rather to set before you the Biblical conception. We will, therefore, first, only notice briefly, in the way of description, the fundamental forms under which all the non-Scriptural ideas of God, whether of our times or of any other, may be included; and then pass to a more extended examination of the Bible doctrine with respect to this subject. This course, while it will enable us to see, by comparison and contrast, the elements of truth and of error, which are contained in the various non-Biblical conceptions, will also help us to perceive the untenableness of these conceptions, as also to appreciate better the Biblical view and the sure foundations upon which this view rests. All views of God, not taught by the Bible, diverge into three main tendencies, according as they regard the Absolute as a universal Material Substance, as an impersonal, unconsciously working Anima Mundi, or as the Creator of the world-personal indeed, but not exercising any direct influence upon its present life. These are the distinguishing marks of the systems of materialism, pantheism, and deism; but before describing these, let us first hastily glance at atheism, as forming the most direct contrast to the Scriptural doctrine of God.

First, then, Atheism: this is the absolute denial of any kind of eos, that is, of any Divine Being, and therefore cannot be classed among the ideas of God above mentioned. This view, that there is absolutely no God at all, was so much detested by the ancient Greeks, that they considered atheism synonymous with wickedness; it exists, as a prin

ciple, although not strictly carried out, in Buddhism; and after having for ages appeared only quite sporadically, it · first assumed the character of a system if indeed it be worthy of the name in the train of French materialism. La Mettrie, for instance, pronounced the belief in the exist ence of a God to be as groundless as it was unprofitable; and during the "reign of terror" under the Convention, when the "Hebertists" laid it down as a principle, " that the King of Heaven must be dethroned just as the kings of the earth," this atheistic tendency, as is well known, penetrated the mass of the French people. Let no one imagine that the tendency is as yet extinct; nay, quite recently all doubt as to even the growing power of atheism has been removed by the blasphemous "Manifestos" of the Commune and the International, as well as by the openly avowed aims of many of our Socialist Unions. Of. late, too, some of our own literati and poets have been unGerman enough to try to transplant this tendency into our German soil; and there are also philosophers — as, e. g., Feuerbach who come forward as its advocates.

Now of atheism it has been said, not without good reason, that it never really existed as a full conviction in any human breast, and that there is always an underlying selfdeception whenever any one professes to be a pure atheist. That a person, in a fanatical over-estimation of reason, should imagine himself able to know and investigate everything, and curtly deny whatever is beyond his knowledge; or that, in the pride which refuses to acknowledge either sin or its Avenger, he should believe himself allsufficient, in base dependence on the world of sense, denying everything that does not belong to it, and thus persuading himself that no God exists, this, after all, is

conceivable enough. But that one should, consciously and conscientiously, make this idle notion his permanent conviction, and that he should not, when denying the Christian's God, venerate aught else as the Divine Power, this is difficult to believe, even apart from the fact that, notwithstanding all the trouble which atheists have taken to discover but one nation utterly devoid of religious consciousness, we have found, down to the present day, in all nations, even the most degraded, some conception or other of a Higher Being, and a feeling of dependence on supernatural powers, and consequently some kind of religious. exercise. Cicero's question (De Nat. Deorum, I. 16) still holds good "What people is there, or what race of men, which has not, even without traditional teaching, some presentiment of the existence of Gods?" But it is not our intention to discuss the being or the non-being of a God in this place; so, we proceed to a description,

Secondly, of Materialism; which is but the twin-brother of atheism. These two forms of the denial of God must necessarily be simultaneous; for he who denies God's existence is unable to maintain the spiritual personality of man. Historically, materialism either precedes or closely follows atheism. The two play into each other's hands, and, in fact, amount to the same thing. For the latter must ultimately believe in the eternity of matter, and, just like materialism, must make matter its God. Between materialism and pantheism, however, a distinction must be drawn. Pantheism considers God as the Soul of the world, and material nature as his body only. Materialism merges God in matter; for, according to it, nothing at all exists but matter, there is no such thing as a separate spiritual existence. All that exists is material; and that which is called spirit, or spiritual life, is nothing but a function of

the life of the body, a necessary product of sensuous perception, and of the nutritive matter absorbed by us, but pre-eminently of the action of the cerebral muscles. Ma-、 terialism may well be called the gospel of the flesh; it is the absolute deification of matter and of the creature, traces of which pervade the whole history of mankind from Babel and Sodom onwards; nay, from the tasting of the forbidden fruit in Paradise down to our own days. Every false belief, and every act of unbelief, like that of Thomas, involves a disposition to sensualism and materialism. Ev-. ery apostasy from the living God, who is a Spirit, necessitates a tendency in the opposite direction to the deification of the flesh, though it may not always go so far.

. Hence unbelief has constantly, from time to time, landed in materialism. We find it in the Buddhism of ancient India; in Greece, among the atomists and the sophists, the Epicureans and the sceptics; also in the middle ages, when the Roman church clearly betrayed her tendency to the worship of matter; and again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the ultimate result of the long-protracted doubts as to revelation. In our own days, the materialistic view has obtained a wide-spread acceptation, owing to the fact that many natural philosophers assume the entirely material descent of imankind, and make out that the ancestors of our race, just like other mammals, originally sprang from the primeval slime. In Germany, too, the influence of this school has been no slight one during the last decades; L. Feuerbach, C. Vogt, J. Moleschott, Büchner, Czolbe, &c., having been, and still being, the chief heralds of this peculiar wisdom.

Thirdly, we more particularly describe Pantheism. This system of unbelieving thought derives its name from the motto v zai nav, i. e., “One and All," which was first

brought into vogue by the Greek philosopher Xenophanes. According to pantheism, God is the universe itself; beyond and outside the world he does not exist, but only in the world. He is the soul, the reason, and the spirit of the world, and all nature is his body. In reality, God is everything, and besides him there is nothing. Thus, making God the soul of the world, pantheism is distinguished, on the one hand, from materialism, according to which God and nature are immediately identical; and, on the other hand, from theism, that is, from the belief in a self-conscious, personal God, who created the world and guides even its most minute details. For the main point of pantheistic belief is, that this soul of the world is not a personal, self-conscious Being, who appears in his totality. in any one phenomenon or at any one moment, so as to comprehend himself or become comprehensible for us, but that it is only the one ever same essence which, filling everything and shaping everything, lives and moves in all existing things, and is revealed in all that is visible, yet is itself never seen. Goethe has depicted it in the oft-quoted words,

"I rise and fall on the waves of life,

I move to and fro in action's strife;

Birth and the grave,

an eternal sea,

The father of occidental pantheism was the Jew Spinoza (1632-1677). "I have," says he, "opinions as to God and nature entirely different from those which mod

1 Faust, erster Theil.