The question, "Are we still Christians?" has received a final answer in the words of Strauss: "If we would speak as honest, upright men, we must acknowledge we are no longer Christians."[1] And in giving this answer he is confident he speaks in the name of a large and rapidly increasing number of men who once believed in the truth of Christianity--"The We I mean no longer counts only by thousands."[2] The further question, "Have we still a Religion?" (understanding by religion "the recognition and veneration of God, and the belief in a future life") is also answered in the negative. Religion "is a delusion, to abolish which ought to be the endeavor of every man whose eyes are open to the truth."[3] The only question which now remains for the speculative intellect is, "What is our conception of the Universe?"--the conception which henceforth must take the place of a personal God. The answer of Strauss is explicit, and in his estimation final: "The conception of the Cosmos, instead of that of a personal God as the finality to which we are led by perception and thought, or as the ultimate fact beyond which we can not proceed, ... assumes the more definite shape of matter infinitely agitated, which, by differentiation and integration, develops itself to ever higher forms and functions, and describes an everlasting circle by evolution, dissolution, and then fresh evolution."[4] This may be called pantheism or atheism, materialism or idealism, just as we please; Strauss has no solicitude about mere names. "If this be considered pure, unmitigated materialism, I will not dispute it. In fact, I have always tacitly regarded the contrast so loudly proclaimed between materialism and idealism (or by whatever term one may designate the view opposed to the former) as a mere quarrel about words. They have a common foe in the dualism which pervaded the conception of the world throughout the Christian era, dividing man into body and soul, his existence into time and eternity, and opposing an eternal Creator to a created and perishable universe."[5]