are pressed, they collect themselves all they can, and make a great effort, and out they come with their piece of science: God is a Great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe. But this piece of science of theirs we will have nothing to say to, for we account it quite hollow; and we say, and have shown (we think), that the Bible, rightly read, will have nothing to say to it either. Yet the whole pinch of the matter is here; and till we are agreed as to what we mean by God, we can never, in discussing religious questions, understand one another or discuss seriously. Yet, as we have said, hardly any of the discussions which arise in religion turn upon this cardinal point. This is what cannot but strike one in that torrent of petitiones principii (for so we really must call them) in the shape of theological letters from clergymen, which pours itself every week through the columns of the Guardian. They all employ the word God with such extraordinary confidence! as if 'a Great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe,' were a verifiable fact given beyond all question; and we had now only to discuss what such a Being would naturally think about Church vestments and the use of the Athanasian Creed. But everything people say, under these conditions, is in truth quite in the air.
Even those who have treated Israel and his religion the most philosophically, seem not to have enough considered that so wonderful an effect must have had some cause to account for it, other than any which they assign. Professor Kuenen, whose excellent History of the Religion of Israel[1] ought to find an English translator, suggests that the Hebrew religion was so unlike that of any other Semitic people
- ↑ De Godsdienst van Israel tot den Ondergang van den Joodschen Staat (The Religion of Israel till the Downfall of the Jewish State); Haarlem. An English translation has now appeared.
