"But why do the Spiritualists so violently rage against us? Why these wails concerning the 'awful spread of materialism'? The Church hates the admirable Epicurus above all other heathen sceptic-sages, simply because he would abolish Churchmen. Is this the standpoint of the psychologist? Can there be anything less rational than the phrase which has of late grown popular, 'The dark and debasing doctrines of materialism'? Listen to the latest words of the learned Serjeant Cox: 'The pursuit of psychology ("_Psyche_," my pretty maid) is certainly as elevating as that of materialism is degrading. The eyes of the materialists are fixed upon the earth. Psychology at least looks up to the heavens (blank sky and air). The regards of materialism are only for the present; psychology has a future'--let me add, a very unpleasant future, if Spiritualists say true. Hear, again, the words of one who was called in his day _l'austère intrigant_--'Belief in the supernatural is a fact, natural, primitive, universal, and consistent in the life and history of the human race. Unbelief in the supernatural begets materialism; materialism, sensuality; sensuality, social convulsions, amid whose storms men again learn to believe and pray' (Guizot). Granted to thee, O theologian! a personal Demiourgos, an anthropomorphic creator, by what right canst thou limit his power, his omnipotence? Surely the baser the material, the greater the feat which works it out into the noblest of forms. Far more wisely speaks an Eastern poet-- 'Is not the highest honour His who from the worst can draw the best? May not your Maker make the world from matter, at His own behest? Nay, more; the sordider the stuff, the cunninger the workman's hand-- Cease, then, your own Almighty Power to bind, to bound, to understand!' * * * * * But man--made, we are told, in the image of God--has returned the good office by modelling his God after his own very human fashion. This is the anthropomorphism, the 'theanthropism' of Mr. Gladstone, concerning which the great master, Aristotle, wrote, 'Men create the gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life.' Meanwhile, I hold it to be one of the brightest features of our times--this gospel derisively called 'of Doubt and Denial.' It shows the firm resolve of mankind no longer to be fooled with the fallacies of many faiths; his longing to supplant the fatuous fires of belief by the pure daylight of present reason, and his determination to shed the lively ray of science upon the dark deceits and delusions, the frauds, the follies, and the failures of the past.