In saying this, I refer merely to the process of inference in itself. That is identical in the two cases. In other respects there are obvious differences, of which one important consequence is, that while the scepticism which denies the existence of God is not unfrequently to be met with, a scepticism which denies the existence of human beings is unknown. The facts which prove that there are men, are grouped together within limits of space and of time which allow of their being so easily surveyed, and they are in themselves so simple and familiar, that all sane minds draw from them their natural inference. The facts which prove that there is a God need, in order to be rightly interpreted, more attention and reflection, more comprehensiveness, impartiality, and elevation of mind. Countless as they are, they can be overlooked, and often have been overlooked. Clear and conspicuous as they are, worldliness and prejudice and sin may blind the soul to their significance. True, the existence and possibility of atheism have often been denied, but the testimony of history to the reality of atheism cannot be set aside. Although many have been called atheists unjustly and calumniously, and although a few who have professed themselves to be atheists may have really possessed a religious belief which they overlooked or were averse to acknowledge, we cannot reasonably refuse to take at their own word the majority of those who have inculcated a naked and undisguised atheism, and claimed and gloried in the name of atheist. Incredible as it may seem that any intelligent being, conscious of human wants and weaknesses, should be able to look upon the wonders of the heavens and of the earth, of the soul within him and of society around him, and yet say that there is no God, men have done so, and we have no alternative but to accept the fact as we find it. It is a fact which involves nothing inconsistent with the truth that the process by which the mind attains to a belief in God is of the same natural and direct, yet inferential, character as the process by which it attains to belief in the existence of finite minds closely akin to itself.