=35.= We affirm that to deny the materiality of God's person is to deny God; for a thing without parts has no whole, and an immaterial body cannot exist.[118] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaims against the incomprehensible God, devoid of "body, parts, and passions," as a thing impossible of existence, and asserts its belief in and allegiance to the true and living God of scripture and revelation. [118] See Note 9. NOTES. =1. Natural to Believe in a God.=--"The great and primary truth 'that there is a God' has obtained among men almost universally and in all ages; so that the holy scriptures, which speak of God in every page, and which advert to the sentiments of mankind for the period of about four thousand years, always assume this truth as admitted. In the early ages of the world, indeed, there is no positive evidence that speculative theism had any advocates; and if, at a subsequent period, the 'fool said in his heart, There is no God,' the sentiment appears more prominent in his affections than in his judgment; and, withal, had so feeble an influence over the minds of men, that the sacred writers never deemed it necessary to combat the error, either by formal arguments, or by an appeal to miraculous operations. Polytheism, not atheism, was the prevailing sin; and therefore the aim of inspired men was not so much to prove the existence of one God, as the non-existence of others,--to maintain His authority, to enforce His laws, to the exclusion of all rival pretenders."... "So clear, full, and overpowering is the evidence of God's existence, that it has commanded general belief in all ages and countries,--the only exceptions being a few savage tribes of a most degraded type, among whom the idea of God has faded and disappeared with every vestige of civilization; and a few eccentric would-be philosophers who affect to doubt everything which others believe, and question the truth of their own intuitions, so that the general assent to the being of a God might be added as a testimony of no small weight in this argument."--_Cassell's Bible Dictionary; article "God."_