ht; and one would
cheerfully hand back to orthodoxy a fairly large parcel of a certain
type of heretical thinker in exchange for a single one who used plain
language to express clear convictions.

What is it that the mass of believers have in their minds when they
speak of God? There can be no doubt but that what the plain man has
always understood by "God" is a person. Every book of religious devotion
implies this; every prayer that is offered takes it for granted that
_someone_ will listen, and probably grant the petition. God is personal,
God is just, God is beneficent, God is intelligent, these are
conceptions that are bound up with all the religions of the world, and
without which they would lack both significance and value. A very acute
theistic writer, Mr. W. H. Mallock, puts this quite plainly when he says
that the God of theism "is represented as revealing himself in the
universe, firstly, as the mind which animates and moves everything,
secondly, as a purposing mind which is infinitely wise and powerful, and
has created a perfect universe with a view to some perfect end; and
lastly, as an ethical mind which out of all the things created by it,
has selected men as the object of a preferential love. A personality
which thinks and wills and loves and hates. That is what mankind in the
mass have always meant by 'God.'"

Indeed, any other kind of God is inconceivable. Whatever may be the
metaphysical subtleties employed, we come ultimately to that. It is
this, the older and the vital conception that is being fought for. The
arguments for any other kind of existence are mere subterfuges. The
pleas for an "Absolute" or an "Unconditioned" are only used to buttress
the older conception, and never till the older one has lost its force.
The unconditioned God is argued for only that it may serve as the basis
for the belief in a personal one. What is proved is not what is asked
for; what is asked for is not what is proved. No wonder that so eminent
a writer as Mr. F. H. Bradley feels constrained to give these
verbalistic thimble riggers a smart rap over the knuckles, as in the
following passage:--

Most of those who insist on the "personality of God" are
intellectually dishonest. They desire one conclusion, and, to reach
it, they argue for another. But the second, if proved, is quite
different, and answers their purpose only because they obscure it
and confound it with the first.... The deity