No such God can be believed to exist by reasoners who rigidly abide by John Locke's rule of philosophising, and if it be urged that he, the author of the rule, was a Theist and a Christian--our answer is, that in such case, like many other philosophers, he practically gave the lie to his own best precept. Books have been written to exhibit the difficulties of (what priests choose to call) Infidelity; and without doubt unbelief _has_ its difficulties. But according to a universally recognised rule of philosophising, of two difficulties we are in all cases to choose the least. From a rule so palpably just no one can reasonably depart, and the Atheist, while freely admitting a great difficulty on his own side, is satisfied there can be demonstrated an infinitely greater difficulty on the side of his opponents. The Atheist labours to convince mankind they are not warranted by the general course of Nature in assigning to it a Cause, inasmuch as it is more in accordance with experience to suppose Nature the uncaused cause, than to imagine, as religionists do, that there is an uncaused cause of Nature. Theologians ask, who created Nature? without adducing satisfactory evidence that Nature was created, and without reflecting that if it is difficult to believe Nature self-existent, it is much more difficult to believe some self-existent Super-nature, capable of producing it. In their anxiety to get rid of a natural difficulty, they invent a supernatural one, and accuse Atheists of 'wilful blindness,' and 'obstinate deafness,' for not choosing so unphilosophic a mode of explaining universal mystery. Call upon them to define their 'all-creative Deity,' and they know not what to answer. Ask them who, what, or where He is, and at once you have them on the hip; at once you spy their utter ignorance, and reduce them to a condition very similar to that of Master Abraham Slender, when with stammering lips he 'sings small like a woman.' To assume everything they are always ready; but to prove anything concerning their Immense Supernatural, they are never prepared. Regularly drilled to argue in a circle, they foolishly imagine everybody else should do the same, and marvel at the man who rigidly adheres to just rules of philosophising and considers experience of natural derivation a far safer guide than their crude, undigested, extravagant, contradictory notions about the confessedly _unknown_.