The author of 'Good Sense' has observed, that names which may be made to mean anything in reality mean nothing. Is not God a name of this class? Our 'state puppet showmen,' as my Lord Brougham nicknamed Priests, who talk so much about Gods, forcibly remind one of that ingenious exhibitor of puppets, who, after saying to his juvenile patronisers--'Look to the right, and there you will see the lions a dewouring the dogs,' was asked--Which is the lion and which is the dogs?' to which query he replied, 'Vichever you please, my little dears, it makes no difference votsomnever.' For in exactly the same spirit do our ghostly exhibitors, they who set up the state puppet show meet the inquiries of the grown children they make so handsomely (again we are under an obligation to Lord Brougham) 'to pay for peeping.' Children of this sort would fain know what is meant by the doctrines concerning the many 'true Gods' they hear such precious rigmaroles about in Church and Conventicle, as well as the many orthodox opinions of that God, whose name is there so often 'taken in vain.' But Priests like the showman in question, answer, in language less inelegant to be sure, but substantially the same, 'Vichever you please, my little dears, it makes no difference votsomnever.' He who declared that the word God was invented by philosophers to screen their own ignorance, taught a valuable truth, though the Author of this Apology never fails mentally to Substitute _quacks_ for _philosophers_. Saint Augustin more candid than modern theologians, said, 'God is a being whom we speak of but whom we cannot describe, and who is superior to all definitions.' Atheists on the other hand, as candidly deny there is any such being. To them it seems that the name God stands for nothing, is the archetype of nothing, explains nothing, and contributes to nothing but the perpetuation of human imbecility, ignorance and error. To them it represents neither shadow nor substance, neither phenomenon nor thing, neither what is ideal nor what is real; yet is it the name without full faith in which there could be no religion. If to the name God some rational signification cannot be attached away goes, or at least away _ought_ to go, that belief in something supernatural which is 'the fundamental principle of all false metaphysics.' 'No such belief can for a moment be entertained by those who see in nature the cause of all effects, and treat with the contempt it merits, the preposterous notion that out of nothing at the bidding of something, of which one can make anything, started everything.