The end is reached at last--no soul, no God, no providence, no immortality! We have waited for a culmination, and now we are called upon to look, "not into the golden Orient, but vaguely all around into a dim, copper firmament pregnant with earthquake and tornado." Or, rather, we are called to look into an abyss, and, "shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, receive no answer" save "the Everlasting No." It only remains for us to listen to Strauss's _De Profundis_ and retire. "The loss of the belief in providence belongs, indeed, to the most sensible deprivations which are connected with a renunciation of Christianity. In the enormous machine of the universe, amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening crash of its ponderous stamps and hammers, in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, man--a helpless and defenseless creature--finds himself placed, not secure for a moment that on some imprudent motion a wheel may not seize and rend him, or a hammer crush him to powder. This sense of abandonment is at first something awful. But, then, what avails it to have recourse to an illusion? Our wish is impotent to refashion the world; the understanding clearly shows that it indeed is such a machine. But it is not merely this. We do not only find the revolution of pitiless wheels in our world-machine, but also the shedding of soothing oil. Our God [the world-machine] does not, indeed, take us into his arms from the outside, but he unseals the well-spring of consolation within our own bosoms.... He who can not help himself in this matter is beyond help, is not yet ripe for our stand-point."[6] There is a weighty and solemn lesson in this illustration of the "tendency of modern thought"--a lesson which even Strauss intended to teach the age, viz., that there is no discernible _via media_ between "the Old Faith and the New"--between the belief in a personal God and the impersonal All. The "New Faith" must at last be the faith of all who reject _providence_, that providence which is pre-eminently revealed in history, instituting a kingdom of God upon earth by a supernatural guidance and grace. The issue, now so sharply and clearly defined, between _a God and no God_, has determined a change in the plan of our work, and justifies, we trust, the attempt we have made to restate and defend "The Theistic Conception of the World." Those who have done me the honor to read "Christianity and Greek Philosophy" will detect in the present volume a radical change of views concerning the concepts Time and Space. This change of position is the result of patient reconsideration of this branch of the discussion, and we allude to it here simply to guard against the charge of unconscious inconsistency. The views presented in this volume must stand or fall on their own merits.