For all men, then, who have religious beliefs, and especially for all men who have Christian beliefs, these questions, What evidence is there for God's existence? and, What is known of His nature? are of primary importance. The answers given to them must determine whether religion and Christianity ought to be received or rejected. There can be no use in discussing other religious questions so long as these fundamental questions have not been thoughtfully studied and distinctly answered. It is only through their investigation that we can establish a right to entertain any religious belief, to cherish any religious feeling, to perform any religious act. And the result to which the investigation leads us must largely decide what sort of a religious theory we shall hold, and what sort of a religious life we shall lead. Almost all religious differences of really serious import may be traced back to differences in men's thoughts about God. The idea of God is the generative and regulative idea in every great religious system and every great religious movement. It is a true feeling which has led to the inclusion of all religious doctrines whatever in a science which bears the name of theology (discourse about God, [Greek: logos peri tou theou]), for what is believed about God determines what will be believed about everything else which is included either under natural or revealed religion. * * * * * In the second place, the moral issues depending on the inquiry before us are momentous. An erroneous result must, from the very nature of the case, be of the most serious character. If there be no God, the creeds and rites and precepts which have been imposed on humanity in His name must all be regarded as a cruel and intolerable burden. The indignation which atheists have so often expressed at the contemplation of religious history is quite intelligible--quite natural; for to them it can only appear as a long course of perversion of the conscience and affections of mankind. If religion be in its essence, and in all its forms and phases, false, the evils which have been associated with it have been as much its legitimate effects as any good which can be ascribed to it; and there can be no warrant for speaking of benefits as its proper effects, or uses and mischiefs as merely occasioned by it, or as its abuses. If in itself false, it must be credited with the evil as well as with the good which has followed it; and all the unprofitable sufferings and useless privations--all the undefined terrors and degrading rites--all the corruptions of moral sentiment, factitious antipathies, intolerance, and persecution--all the spiritual despotism of the few, and the spiritual abjectness of the many--all the aversion to improvement and opposition to science, &c., which are usually referred to false religion and to superstition,--must be attributed to religion in itself, if there be no distinction between