, will recognise the attempt as at least consistent: and will be
ready to admit that if the arduous effort prove anteriorly a First Great
Cause, and His attributes, be futile (which, however, I do not admit),
it was an attempt unneeded on the score of its own merits; albeit, with
an obvious somewhat of justice, pure reason may desire to begin at the
beginning. No one, who thinks at all upon religion, however
misbelieving, can entertain any mental prejudice against the existence
of a Deity, or against the received character of His attributes. Such a
man would be merely in a savage state, irrational: whilst his own mind,
so speculating, would stand itself proof positive of an Intellectual
Father; either immediately, as in the first man's case, or mediately, as
in our own, it must have sprung out of that Being, who is emphatically
the Good One--God. But if, as is possible, a mind, capable of thinking,
and keen to think on other themes, from any cause, educational or moral,
has neglected this great track of mediation, has "forgotten God," and
"had him _not_ in all his thoughts," such an one I invite to walk with
me; and, in spite of all incompleteness and insufficiency, uncaptious of
much that may haply be fanciful or false, briefly and in outline to test
with me sundry probabilities of the Christian scheme, considered
antecedently to its elucidation.

A GOD: AND HIS ATTRIBUTES.

I will commence with a noble, and, as I believe, an inspired sentence:
than which no truth uttered by philosophers ever was more clearly or
more sublimely expressed. "In the beginning was the Word: and the Word
was with God; and the Word was God." In its due course, we will consider
especially the difference between the Word and God; likewise the seeming
contradiction, but true concord, of being simultaneously God, and with
God. At present, and previously to the true commencement of our _a
priori_ thoughts, let us, by a word or two, paraphrase that brief but
comprehensive sentence, "In the beginning was the Word." Eternity has no
beginning, as it has no end: the clock of Time is futile there: it
might as well attempt to go in vacuo. Nevertheless, in respect to
finite intelligences like ourselves, seeing that eternity is an idea
totally inconceivable, it is wise, nay it is only possible, to be
presented to the mind piecemeal. Even our deepest mathematicians do not
scruple to speak of points "infinitely remote;" as if in that phrase
there ex