RE II.

LIFE WITHOUT GOD 43
PART I.--THE INDIVIDUAL 45
PART II.--SOCIETY 72

LECTURE III.

THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM 117

LECTURE IV.

NATURE 175

LECTURE V.

HUMANITY 245

LECTURE VI.

THE CREATOR 297

LECTURE VII.

THE FATHER 340

LECTURE I.

_OUR IDEA OF GOD._

(At Geneva, 17th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 11th Jan. 1864.)

GENTLEMEN,

Some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, a German writer published a
piece of verse which began in this way: "Our hearts are oppressed with
the emotions of a pious sadness, at the thought of the ancient Jehovah
who is preparing to die." The verses were a dirge upon the death of the
living God; and the author, like a well educated son of the nineteenth
century, bestowed a few poetic tears upon the obsequies of the Eternal.

I was young when these strange words met my eyes, and they produced in
me a kind of painful bewilderment, which has, I think, for ever engraven
them in my memory. Since then, I have had occasion to learn by many
tokens that this fact was not at all an exceptional one, but that men
of influence, famous schools, important tendencies of the modern mind,
are agreed in proclaiming that the time of religion is over, of religion
in all its forms, of religion in the largest sense of the word. Beneath
the social disturbances of the day, beneath the discussions of science,
beneath the anxiety of some and the sadness of others, beneath the
ironical and more or less insulting joy of a few, we read at the
foundation of many intellectual manifestations of our time these gloomy
words: "Henceforth no more God for humanity!" What may well send a
shudder of fright through society--more than threatening war, more than
possible revolution, more than the plots which may be hatching in the
dark against the security of persons or of property--is, the number, the
importance, and the extent of the efforts which are making in our days
to extinguish in men's souls their faith in the living God.

This fear, Gentlemen, I should wish to communicate to you, but I should
wish also to confine it within its just limits. Religion (I take this
term in its most general acceptation) is not, as many say that it is,
either dead or dying. I want no other proof of this than the pains which
so many people are taking to kill it. It is often those who sa