There is no God! What, then, caused this mighty universe? To be caused implies a cause, certainly; and that cause must, in the very nature of things, be adequate for the production of the effect manifested. But, inasmuch as cause and effect are but relative terms, the cause could not exist independently of the effect, and _vice versâ_. Therefore, as far as the human mind is capable of mentating, the universe could not have been caused. It is, therefore, eternal. What that inherent power of matter is that hides itself so mysteriously behind the phenomena of nature we cannot tell, farther than that, being the inherent property of eternal matter, it also is eternal. This point is the limit of the human understanding, beyond which it is apparently impossible at present for the mind of man to soar. In the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, “there is a power behind humanity and behind all things; a power of which humanity is but a small and fugitive product; a power which was, in the course of ever-changing manifestations, before humanity was, and will continue through all other manifestations when humanity has ceased to be.” This power, of which matter and motion, thought and volition, are but the phenomenal manifestations, and which regulates the varied movements of those myriads of stellar systems interspersed throughout the infinity of space—this exhaustless power of life and energy is to the human mind, as at present constituted, unknowable. Call it Law; call it Gravity; call it the Mysterious Unknown; but call it not God, that word which has brought so much bitter anguish to humanity, and which blighted the beauty of nature, causing hate where love should be, and tears to fall where smiles should gladden the heart of man. Whether or not the mind of man in future ages will be able to lift the veil that at present lies between him and the Great Unknown time alone can tell. At present we are at the mercy of an imperfectly-developed nervous organisation, with its five special senses, which, though very far superior to the lowly nervous development of our remote ancestors of millions of centuries back in the history of life, is perfectly inadequate for the solution of the great problem of existence. But a time will probably arrive in the dim and misty future when other and more important senses will be evolved within the human frame, which may bring man nearer the elucidation of this greatest of all mysteries. Meanwhile let us apply ourselves boldly to the uprooting of the old Upas tree of religious faith—that pernicious development of the god-idea that has been the constant blight of all ages, stifling reason by fostering blind faith and gross credulity, robbing the race of all that is noble, manly, and honest, by the propagation of those canker worms, hypocrisy and cant, and retarding the temporal salvation of man by the substitution of the vain and foolish theory of future rewards and punishments.