39(5 LESSONS FKOM NATUEE. [CHAP. XIII. 



V. The cause of all things has not personality, and con 

 sequently neither feeling, nor intelligence, nor will. 



VI. All who pretend to teach religion are impostors or dupes. 



VII. Our physical-science teachers are the supreme expo 

 nents of all truth, and the ultimate arbiters of all actions. 



VIII. There is no such thing as real merit or demerit, as 

 all our actions are absolutely determined for us, and free-will 

 is the most baseless of delusions. 



It is possible that one or other of the writers here noticed 

 may object to what has been said on the ground that their 

 words may be understood in some other sense, and that some 

 other passages of their writings may be taken as having 

 another meaning. But if it be conceded only that it is pos 

 sible that God exists, then in the presence of such possibility 

 men are bound not so to write as to be readily understood as 

 opposing theism, while contenting themselves with having 

 somewhere emitted a sentence of less equivocal tendency. As 

 well might men leave bottles of strychnine and prussic acid 

 about in an infant school and excuse themselves because they 

 had labelled each bottle with the word &quot; poison,&quot; in Greek. 

 If God exists at all, He is manifestly not to be patronised 

 by a few obscure, ambiguous phrases which writers may con 

 descend to accord Him; and such writers, if they really 

 believe in Him, are bound to declare their conviction with no 

 uncertain sound. 



The doctrines just passed in review acquire an additional 

 importance from another characteristic of the anti-religious 

 school, which is rapidly becoming more manifest prudential 

 disguise being discarded, as no longer necessary. 



A short time ago it might have been contended that these 

 s P ecu l a tions, however calculated to damage indi- 

 viduals, were not of immediate political importance. 



The unsuspecting might have contended that these physical 

 dogmatists were all &quot;liberals,&quot; and that therefore no hin 

 drance to free inquiry, or the untrammelled propagation of 

 truth, need ever be apprehended at their hands, and that with 

 a fair field and no favour truth must prevail. 



