some intelligible answer to the question, What is the cause of these marvellous phenomena which I behold? and what is the ground of that religious belief which has always prevailed in the world? But Mr. Holyoake is deterred from any attempt to answer such questions by its amazing presumption: "The assumption is,--we may look through Nature up to Nature's God. That seems to me to imply a power, a capacity, an endowment, which repels me at the outset. If we are to deal with the common sense of probability, I say I am repelled by the amazing probability which is against me if I am to deal with the assumption of distinctness,--that I can look from Nature up to Nature's God. Why, in the presence of this shadowy form of things, before which all men stand in awe and dread, in the presence of so many mysteries and marvels which art is unable to unravel, which philosophy is unable to explain, it seems to me an immense endowment when a man can say with confidence, I look through Nature, and beyond Nature, up to Nature's God. I say the presumption of the thing does repel me."--"Let the profound sense of our own littleness, which here creeps in upon us, check the dogmatic spirit and arrest the presumptuous world; we stand in the great presence of Nature, whose inspiration should be that of modesty, humility, and love."--"When my friend talks so much about matter, ... his reasoning proceeds upon this very great hypothesis, namely, that _he knows_ all that matter can do, and all that it cannot do. If he does not know that, I wonder by what right he says so plainly that the wonders he observes in Nature are not the work of Nature, but of some Being above Nature. That which repels me from that aspect of the argument is its amazing presumption, the amount of knowledge it implies."[270] Foster's argument against Dogmatic Atheism seems to have made some impression on Mr. Holyoake, since he makes the important admission that "the denial of a God implies infinite knowledge as the ground of disproof," but it is here retorted against Dogmatic Theism; and Unbelief, at other times so arrogant in its pretensions, so confident in the powers of reason, and so proud of the prerogatives of man, borrows the cloak of modesty from the wardrobe of true science, and assumes an attitude of deep humility. At other times Mr. Holyoake does not scruple to sit in judgment on what God,--supposing such a Being to exist,--could or could not do; on what He could or could not permit to be done;--He could not create a moral and responsible agent, and leave him to fall; He could not require or receive any satisfaction for sin; He could not hear or answer the prayers of his people; He could not inflict penal suffering, or allow it to be permanent. There is no presumption, it would seem, in determining what God could or could not do; but "when we stand in the great presence of Nature," her inspiration should be "that of modesty and humility."