The two highest attributes of God land us, then, in the most thorough Pantheism; further, before remarking on the other divine attributes, I would challenge the reader to pause and try to realise this infinite and absolute being. "That a man can be conscious of the infinite is, then, a supposition which, in the very terms in which it is expressed, annihilates itself.... The infinite, if it is to be conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially everything-and actually nothing; for if there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited; and if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being any other thing. But again, it must also be conceived as actually everything and potentially nothing; for an unrealised potentiality is likewise a limitation. If the infinite can be" (in the future) "that which it is not" (in the present) "it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else and discerned as an object of consciousness." I think, then, that we must be content, on the showing of Dr. Mansel, to allow that God is, in his own nature--from this point of view--quite beyond the grasp of our faculties; _as regards us he does not exist_, since he is indistinguishable and undiscernable. Well might the Church exclaim "Save me from my friends!" when a dean acknowledges that her God is a self-contradictory phantom; oddly enough, however, the Church likes it, and accepts this fatal championship. I might have put this argument wholly in my own words, for the subject is familiar to every one who has tried to gain a distinct idea of the Being who is called "God," but I have preferred to back my own opinions with the authority of so orthodox a man as Dean Mansel, trusting that by so doing the orthodox may be forced to see where logic carries them. All who are interested in this subject should study his lectures carefully; there is really no difficulty in following them, if the student will take the trouble of mastering once for all the terms he employs. The book was lent to me years ago by a clergyman, and did more than any other book I know to make me what is called an "infidel;" it proves to demonstration the impossibility of our having any logical, reasonable, and definite idea of God, and the utter hopelessness of trying to realise his existence. It seems necessary here to make a short digression to explain, for the benefit of those who have not read the book from which I have been quoting, how Dean Mansel escaped becoming an "atheist." It is a curious fact that the last part of this book is as remarkable for its assumptions, as is the earlier portion its pitiless logic. When he ought in all reason to say, "we can know nothing and therefore can believe nothing," he says instead, "we can know nothing and therefore let us