say there is no God? What are their names?
Having mingled much with thoroughgoing sceptics, and read many volumes
of heretical literature, we can confidently defy Professor Flint to
produce the names of half a dozen dogmatic Atheists, and we will give
him the whole world's literature to select from. Does he think that the
brains of an Atheist are addled? If not, why does he make the Atheist
first affirm that there is _no_ God, and then affirm the impossibility
of man's ever knowing whether there is a God or not? How could a man
who holds his judgment in suspense, or who thinks the universal mystery
insoluble to us, dogmatise upon the question of God's existence? If
Professor Flint will carefully and candidly study sceptical literature,
he will find that the dogmatic Atheist is as rare a the phoenix, and
that those who consider the extant evidences of Theism inadequate, do
not go on to affirm an universal negative, but content themselves with
expressing their ignorance of Nature's _why_. For the most part they
endorse Thomas Cooper's words, "I do not say there _is_ no God, but
this I say, _I know not_" Of course this modesty of affirmation may seem
impiously immodest to one who has been trained and steeped in Theism so
long that the infinite universe has become quite explicable to him; but
to the sceptic it seems more wise and modest to confess one's ignorance,
than to make false pretensions of knowledge.

Professor Flint "characterised the objections which Atheism urges
against the existence of God as extremely feeble." Against the existence
of _what_ God? There be Gods many and Lords many; which of the long
theological list is to be selected as _the_ God? A God, like everything
else from the heights to the depths, can be known only by his
attributes; and what the Atheist does is not to argue against the
existence of _any_ God, which would be sheer lunacy, but to take the
attributes affirmed by Theism as composing its Deity and inquire whether
they are compatible with each other and with the facts of life. Finding
that they are not, the Atheist simply sets Theism aside as not proven,
and goes on his way without further afflicting himself with such
abstruse questions.

The Atheist must be a very dreary creature, thinks Professor Flint. But
why? Does he know any Atheists, and has he found them one half as dreary
as Scotch Calvinists? It may seem hard to the immoderately selfish that
some Infinite Spirit is not looking af