We ought never to call a man an atheist till we know what kind of God it is that he has been brought up to believe in, and what kind of God it is that he rejects, it may be, from the best and highest motives. If we can respect the childlike faith of a charcoal-burner, let us also respect philosophical doubt; it may well indicate a turning-point in the life of a man, in which he is perhaps abandoning a belief of which he has seen the error, or is perhaps seeking to replace the less worthy faith, however dear it may be to him, by one more perfect, however its novelty may distress him; without such “atheism” as this our religion would long ago have only been a congealed hypocrisy. In the life of an individual, as in the life of a nation, there comes a moment when opinion becomes modified; the old theory of the world being fashioned by a workman as a potter moulds his vessels of clay, has gradually disappeared. These ideas were so repugnant to the enlightened mind of Sakya-muni, the Hindoo Prince--universally known as Buddha--that he considered it irreverent to enquire how the world was made, and still more audacious to attempt to answer the enquiry. That which took the place of henotheism amongst the Hindoos might aptly be termed adivism, a denial of the old Devas. Such a denial, however, of what was once believed, but could be honestly believed no longer, so far from being the end of religion, is in reality its vital principle. Whilst about to deal with ideas which I know are true, it is gratifying to expose at the same time certain false opinions which have been put forth on the subject; it is curious to note how to start with a false opinion brings one to a wrong conclusion. Herodotus, Cæsar, and Quintus Curtius, who have all written on popular religious beliefs, relate that men adored the sun, the earth, the sky, fire, and water; that they worshipped certain rivers, and certain trees, and considered as gods all things that were useful to them. This was the opinion of the ancient writers who knew no better, and modern theorists repeated also: “Primitive men deified the grand natural phenomena of nature, especially the stars, taking them for gods.” It is not a matter for surprise that primitive man should have formed the opinion that either in the world or out of it there should be a sovereign power which they considered as their gods. In the eighteenth century the theory of fetishism was held to explain all the intuitions of primitive man; although not pertinent to the subject, this was not perceived until afterwards, and the theory was considered reasonable.