representations of Zechariah, as we learn from the accounts themselves, were so obscure that without an explanation they could not be understood by himself; and those of Daniel were so dark, that even when explained, they were still unintelligible, not to others only, but also to the prophet himself. He argues entirely against miracles, as either contrary to nature or above nature, declaring any such to be "a sheer absurdity," "_merum esse absurdum_" Of the Scriptures themselves he points out that the ancient Hebrew is entirely lost. "Of the authors, or, if you please, writers, of many books, we either know almost nothing, or we entertain grave doubts as to the correctness with which the several books are ascribed to the parties whose names they bear." "Then we neither know on what occasion, nor at what time those books were indited, the writers of which are unknown to us. Further, we know nothing of the hands into which the books fell; nor of the codices which have furnished such a variety of readings, nor whether, perchance, there were not many other variations in other copies." Voltaire says of Spinoza, "Not only in the character of a Jew he attacks the New Testament, but in the character of a scholar he ruins the Old." The logic of Spinoza was directed to the demonstration of one substance with infinite attributes, for which one substance with infinite attributes he had as equivalent the name "God." Some who have since followed Spinoza, have agreed in his one substance, but have denied the possibility of infinite attributes. Attributes or qualities, they urge, are attributes of the finite or conditioned, and that you cannot have attributes of substance except as attributes of its modes. You have in this distinction the division line between Spinozism and Atheism. Spinoza recognises infinite intelligence, but Atheism cannot conceive intelligence except in relation as quality of the conditioned, and not as the essence of the absolute. Spinoza denied the doctrine of freewill, as with him all phenomena are of God, so he rejects the ordinary notions of good and evil. The popular views of Spinoza in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were chiefly derived from the volumes of his antagonists; men learned his name because priests abused him, few had perused his works for themselves. To-day we may fairly say that Spinoza's logic and his biblical criticisms gave a vigour and force to the heresy of the latter half of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century; a directness and effectiveness theretofore wanting. As for the Bible, there was no longer an affected reverence for every yod or comma, church traditions were ignored wherever inconsistent with reason, and the law itself was boldly challenged when its letter was against the spirit of human progress.