"My dear uncle," replied Harrington, "you are insufficiently informed in the mystery of modern theology. There are no atheists, properly speaking; they who are so called merely deny any personal, conscious, intelligent sovereign of the universe. Even those who call themselves so, and will have it that they are so, are told that they are none. I myself have perused statements of some of our modern 'spiritualists,' who know every thing, even other people's consciousness quite as well as their own (and perhaps better), that the said atheists are mistaken in thinking themselves such; that such genuine love of the spirit of universal nature is something truly divine, and that they are animated by 'a deeply religious spirit,' though they never suspected it!" "Well," said I. "if you had too much reason, as you flattered yourself (adopting Hume's criterion), to become an atheist, could you not have adopted such views as those of Mr. G. Atkinson and Miss Martineau, who both possess surely (as they claim to possess) that 'religious reverence' of nature of which you have just spoken?" "Why," he replied, "I am afraid that, if I had too much reason for the one, I have not faith enough for the other. That the miracles and prophecies of the Bible may possibly have been true,--only the effect of mesmerism;--that things quite as wonderful, or more so, happen every day by this wonderful agent;--that every phenomenon that takes place does so in virtue a perfectly wise LAW, without any wise LAWGIVER;--that this wise law has, it seems, prearranged that man should generally exhibit an inveterate tendency to religious systems of some kind, though all religions are absurd, and persist in believing in his free will, though free from a downright impossibility;--that these contradictions and absurdities of man are the result of an irreversible necessity, and yet that Mr. Atkinson may hope to correct them;--that, by the same necessity, man is in no degree culpable or responsible, and yet that Mr. Atkinson may perpetually blame him; --that no man can do any thing 'wrong,' and yet that till he believes that, man will never cease to do it;--that people may read without their eyes, and distinguish colors as colors though they are born blind;--that Bacon was an atheist, and that this may be proved by induction from his own writings;--these and other paradoxes, which I must believe, if I believe Mr. Atkinson, require a faith which it would really be unreasonable to expect from such a sceptic as I am." ____