God has intelligence, Therefore, there must be an intelligence greater than God. Seeing the logical force of this, he quibbles thus: "We do not say that God _has_ intelligence, but that God _is_ wisdom in form and love in essence, and therefore the infinite source of all intelligence." This will not do, Mr. "Rationalist!" It is entirely too vague. You must either contend for a personal or an impersonal God. Give us either Deism or Pantheism, and not an incongruous mixture, and then we will know on what ground to meet you. If you mean that God is simply the aggregate, or even the essence, of all intelligence, all love, all good, why this is a mere abstraction, and even an Atheist might accept it; but if you are contending for anything like the Christian's God, as set forth in the Bible, you will have to alter your definitions very materially. As a specimen illustration of "Rationalist's" spiritual method of resolving Scriptural difficulties I give below his version of the story of Elisha, the children, and the bears, under the "rubbing off" process. We, Freethinkers, he says, will not "object to the bears" when we understand what the story means, and here is his elucidation, _verbatim et literatim_:-- "Elisha represents the external or literal words of Holy Writ on which the mantle of spiritual truth still rests. Children represent affections--don't fond mothers even yet call them 'little loves?'--They also correspond to the opposite, and so evil loves which destroy obedience to the external life of goodness, taught in, at least, some of the literal words of Scripture, naturally mock at the baldness of Elisha. Baldness, since it refers to the head, and the head corresponds to that union of will and intellect in man which rules, and is, the life, and ultimates in the very extreme of its very minute external, corresponds to the most external of the will and thought of Elisha, who represents the literal meaning of Scripture. So this incident means that evil loves could see no ultimate good to _themselves_ in the doing of any good in a practical every-day way even where that was clearly enjoined, and rendered as beautiful externally as hair is, and therefore mocked at it, or rather at what seemed to them the lack of it. Then the bears, which correspond to the animal passions of the animal man, came out of the woods--woods correspond to the natural perceptions of natural truth in man--and utterly destroyed these evil loves out of the life. Again you see we find the same truth; that the Lord implants remains of goodness and truth in every degree of man's life, even in the natural man, fitted to cope with and conquer his evils, if man himself will but permit it."