f the age means by the Supreme
Being what Catholics mean. Nay, it would be a relief to my mind to gain
some ground of assurance, that the parties influenced by that spirit had,
I will not say, a true apprehension of God, but even so much as the idea
of what a true apprehension is.

Nothing is easier than to use the word, and mean nothing by it. The
heathens used to say, "God wills," when they meant "Fate;" "God provides,"
when they meant "Chance;" "God acts," when they meant "Instinct" or
"Sense;" and "God is every where," when they meant "the Soul of Nature."
The Almighty is something infinitely different from a principle, or a
centre of action, or a quality, or a generalization of phenomena. If,
then, by the word, you do but mean a Being who keeps the world in order,
who acts in it, but only in the way of general Providence, who acts
towards us but only through what are called laws of Nature, who is more
certain not to act at all than to act independent of those laws, who is
known and approached indeed, but only through the medium of those laws;
such a God it is not difficult for any one to conceive, not difficult for
any one to endure. If, I say, as you would revolutionize society, so you
would revolutionize heaven, if you have changed the divine sovereignty
into a sort of constitutional monarchy, in which the Throne has honour and
ceremonial enough, but cannot issue the most ordinary command except
through legal forms and precedents, and with the counter-signature of a
minister, then belief in a God is no more than an acknowledgment of
existing, sensible powers and phenomena, which none but an idiot can deny.
If the Supreme Being is powerful or skilful, just so far forth as the
telescope shows power, and the microscope shows skill, if His moral law is
to be ascertained simply by the physical processes of the animal frame, or
His will gathered from the immediate issues of human affairs, if His
Essence is just as high and deep and broad and long as the universe, and
no more; if this be the fact, then will I confess that there is no
specific science about God, that theology is but a name, and a protest in
its behalf an hypocrisy. Then is He but coincident with the laws of the
universe; then is He but a function, or correlative, or subjective
reflection and mental impression, of each phenomenon of the material or
moral world, as it flits before us. Then, pious as it is to think of Him,
while the pageant of experiment or