EXISTENCE OF GOD. With this view of religion in general, all the other vital doctrines of Christianity suffered an equal depreciation. The existence of God is conceded, but the proof is impossible. His personality cannot be affirmed; it is confounded with the soul of the world. Of course, the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be accepted; for reason sheds no light sufficiently clear to establish it. A high dignitary of the church, Cannabich, wrote a book in positive denial of the Trinity, original sin, justification, satisfaction of Christ, baptism, and the Lord's Supper. As for the Trinity, the early Christians had no such tenet, and it was never concocted until after the lapse of several centuries of the Christian era. Both philosophy and nature are as capable of establishing the evidence of God's existence as the Scriptures themselves. The idea we have of God is due to prejudice and education. The mass of the Rationalists said, with Lichtenberg, that instead of God making man after his image, man had made God after his human image. DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. The Rationalists were fond of reasoning by analogy, and they used that method of argument freely in their discussions on the inspiration of the Scriptures. God never pursues the plan of operating immediately upon nature. His laws are the mediate measures by which he communicates with man. Gravitation is an instrument he employs for the control of the material world. Thus, in some way, does God impress upon man's mind all that he wishes to reveal, without any necessity of direct inspiration. The doctrine was, therefore, rejected because there was no need of it, and from this step it was easy to assume the position that there is no inspiration. This the Rationalists did assume. "Grant inspiration," said they, "and you bind us down to the belief that all the contents of the Scriptures are true. You force us to believe what our reason does not comprehend. The doctrine of inspiration opens the floodgate for the belief of a mass of mythical stuff which we will no more grant to be historically true than Niebuhr will admit the validity of the legends of early Rome." The poets of every land have enjoyed a sort of rhapsody when in their highest flights. This rhapsody or ecstasy is all that these idolaters of reason will concede. Doederlein's views of inspiration were much more elevated than those held by many of his _confreres_; but he too speaks of poetical excitement, and draws a line of distinction between the inspired and uninspired parts of Scripture. But Ammon represents this subject better than Doederlein. It was his opinion that the idea of a mediate divine instruction is applicable to all human knowledge. He rejects the notion peculiar to revelation. Inspiration cannot for a moment be accepted as an immediate divine impression, because it would compromise the supremacy of reason, and destroy man's intellectual and moral liberty. The diversity of style perceptible in the writers of the