our own infallibility,--a piece of
arrogance the public always punish by disbelieving you when you are in
the right."[258] Accordingly the thesis which Mr. Holyoake undertook to
maintain in public discussion was couched in these terms:--"That we have
_not sufficient evidence_ to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being
independent of Nature;"[259] and so far from venturing to deny His
existence, he makes the important admission, that "_denying implies
infinite knowledge as the ground of disproof_."

It is admitted, then, by the Secularist himself,--that there _may be_ a
God,--that there may be evidence of His existence,--that it may yet be
discovered in the progress of natural reason,--and that to deny any one
of these possibilities would be to assume "infallibility," or to
arrogate "infinite knowledge as the ground of disproof." Now, we humbly
conceive that there is enough in these admissions, if not to disarm the
Secular polemic, yet to shut up every seriously reflecting man, not,
perhaps, to the instant recognition of a Divine Being, but certainly to
the duty of earnest, patient, and persevering inquiry. It was with this
view that both Chalmers and Foster penned those powerful passages which
seem to have left some impression on the mind even of Mr. Holyoake, not
for the purpose, as he seems to imagine, of confounding Atheism with
Anti-theism, but for the very opposite purpose of discriminating between
the two, so as to show that, the one being impossible, the _other_ can
afford no security against the possible truth of Religion. And every
word of warning which they convey should tell with powerful effect on
Mr. Holyoake's conscience, after the admissions which he has
deliberately made, especially when he is engaged in the cheerless task
of undermining the faith of multitudes in their "Father which is in
heaven."

Dr. Chalmers devotes a chapter of his "Natural Theology" to illustrate
"the duty which is laid upon men by the _possibility_ or even the
_imagination_ of a God." He does not overlook, on the contrary he founds
upon, the distinction between Skeptical and Dogmatic Atheism. "Going
back," he says, "to the very earliest of our mental conceptions on this
subject, we advert first to the distinction, in point of real and
logical import, between unbelief and disbelief. There being no ground
for affirming that there is a God, is a different proposition from there
being ground for affirming that there is no God....