datum "God is love"? No; but a work on the questions, Is there a God? and, if so, Is he a God of love? And yet the work is written by a man who evidently tries to argue fairly. What shall we say of the despotism of preformed beliefs? May we not say at least this much--that those who endeavour to reconcile their theories of divine goodness with the facts of human evil might well appropriate to themselves the words above quoted, "We have neither the facts nor the faculties to answer such questions"? For the "facts" indeed are absent, and the "faculties" of impartial thought must be absent also, if this obvious truth cannot be seen--that "these questions" only derive their "speculatively unanswerable" character from the rational falsity of the manner by which it is sought to answer them. The "facts" of our moral nature, so far as honest reason can perceive, belie the hypothesis of Theism; and although the "faculties" of man may be forced by prejudice into an acceptance of contradictory propositions, the truth is obvious that only by the hypothesis of Evolution can that old-tied knot be cut--the Origin of Evil. The form of Theism for which Dr. Flint is arguing is the current form, viz., that there is a God who combines in himself the attributes of _infinite_ power and _perfect_ goodness--a God at once _omnipotent_ and _wholly_ moral. But, in view of the fact that moral evil exists in man, the proposition that God is omnipotent and the proposition that he is wholly moral become contradictory; and therefore the fact of moral evil can only be met, either by abandoning one or other of these propositions, or by altogether rejecting the hypothesis of Theism. * * * * * III. THE SPECULATIVE STANDING OF MATERIALISM.