I cannot think this statement altogether free from ambiguity. Whatever may have been the precise forms in which the ideas of the vulgar or the philosopher were embodied, there is strong proof that a higher and better conception of God, though indefinite and indistinct, underlay them all. The most degraded polytheist has indistinct conceptions of a Supreme God above all the degraded objects of his worship. It seems to me impossible that such a conception of God can have been attained from revelation. It may, in a certain sense, be said, looking at the precise form in which it is embodied, that it has been derived by us historically from the Jewish race. But it must have had a prior origin. St. Paul considered that the material universe manifested His eternal power and Godhead. The primitive form of all the great oriental religions contained in them the idea of God. It is simply absurd to affirm that they derived it from the Bible. It is true that the existence of a primitive revelation anterior to the Bible has often been assumed to account for this knowledge, but this is a bare assumption of which we have no proof, and whose only basis is conjecture. Judaism and Christianity have been instrumental in widely spreading correct conceptions of the Deity and dissipating false ones. Yet if the conception had not existed in the mind at least implicitly, no formal revelation could have put it there, for every such revelation must be conveyed in language, and all language is meaningless, unless the mind can realize its conceptions. The assertion, therefore, that the conception of God has been first communicated through the channel of the Bible, and is afterwards proved by reason, seems to me to be one not devoid of danger. On the contrary, our belief that God exists is the very pre‐condition of our being able to believe that He has revealed Himself. This conception revelation may modify, invest with a higher moral character, and import into it definiteness and precision, but it cannot create it. It is on such grounds that the author in question seeks to involve his reasoning and that of all other defenders of Christianity in a vicious circle. I fully admit that the conception of God has been elevated and purified by the influence of Christianity, and that the teaching of Christianity on this subject is in conformity with our highest reason. But it is absurd to affirm that this is reasoning in a circle, and that the Christian argument involves reasoning from Theism to Christianity and from Christianity back to Theism.