"Mere" God is, in very truth, all that we Theists have to offer the world in exchange for the certainties of its Bibles, Korans, Vedas, and all other revelations whatsoever. On points where they each speak with certainty, our lips are dumb. About much they assert, we confess our ignorance. Where they know, we only think or hope. Where they possess all the clearness of a sign-post, our eyes can only study the mistiness of a valley before the rising sun has dispelled the wreathing clouds. They proclaim immortality, and are quite _au fait_ as to the particulars of our future life. They differ in details, it is true, as to whether we live in a jewelled city, where the dust is gold-dust and the gates pearls, and spend our time in attending Sacred Harmonic Societies with an archangelic Costa directing perpetual oratorios, or whether we lie in rose-embowered arbours with delights unlimited, albeit unintellectual; but if we take them one at a time they are most satisfactory in the absolute information afforded by each. But we, we can only, whisper--and the lips of some of us quiver too much to speak--"I believe in the life everlasting." We do not pretend to _know_ anything about it; the belief is intuitive, but is not demonstrable; it is a hope and a trust, not an absolute knowledge. We entertain a reasonable hope of immortality; we argue its likelihood from considerations of the justice and the love which, as we believe, rule the universe; we, many of us--as I freely confess I do myself--believe in it with a firmness of conviction absolutely immovable; but challenged to _prove_ it, we cannot answer. "Here," the revelationists triumphantly exclaim, "is our advantage; we foretell with absolute certainty a future life, and can give you all particulars about it." Then follows a confused jumble of harps and houris, of pasture-field and hunting-grounds; we seek for certainty and find none. All that they agree in, _i e_., a future life, we find imprinted on our own hearts, a dictate of natural religion; all they differ in is contained in their several revelations, and as they all contradict each other about the revealed details, we gain nothing from them. Nature whispers to us that there is a life to come; revelation babbles a number of contradictory particulars, marring the majesty of the simple promise, and adding nothing reliable to the sum of human knowledge. And the subject of immortality is a fair specimen of what is taught respectively by nature and by revelation; what is common to all creeds is natural, what is different in each is revealed. It is so with respect to God. The idea of God belongs to all creeds alike; it is the foundation-stone of natural religion; confusion begins when revelation steps in to change the musical whisper of Nature into a categorical description worthy of "Mangnall's Questions." Triune, solitary, dual, numberless, whatever He is revealed to be in the world's varied sacred