He who declared that the word God was invented by philosophers to screen their own ignorance, taught a valuable truth, though the Author of this Apology never fails mentally to Substitute quacks for philosophers.

Saint Augustin more candid than modern theologians, said, ’God is a being whom we speak of but whom we cannot describe, and who is superior to all definitions.’  Atheists on the other hand, as candidly deny there is any such being.  To them it seems that the name God stands for nothing, is the archetype of nothing, explains nothing, and contributes to nothing but the perpetuation of human imbecility, ignorance and error.  To them it represents neither shadow nor substance, neither phenomenon nor thing, neither what is ideal nor what is real; yet is it the name without full faith in which there could be no religion.  If to the name God some rational signification cannot be attached away goes, or at least away ought to go, that belief in something supernatural which is ‘the fundamental principle of all false metaphysics.’  ’No such belief can for a moment be entertained by those who see in nature the cause of all effects, and treat with the contempt it merits, the preposterous notion that out of nothing at the bidding of something, of which one can make anything, started everything.

The famous Mr. Law, in his ’Appeal to all that doubt or disbelieve the truths of the Gospel,’ gratuitously allows ’it is the same impossibility for a thing to be created out of nothing as by nothing,’ for which sensible allowance ‘insane philosophy’ owes him much.  Indeed the dogma, if true, proves all religion false, for it strikes full at belief in a God, a belief which, it cannot be too often repeated, is to religion what blood is to the brain and oxygen to the blood.

Materialism is hated by priests, because no consistent Materialist can stop short of disbelief in God.  He believes in Nature and Nature alone.  By Nature he understands unity.  The ONE which; includes all, and is all.

That it pertains to the nature of substance to exist; and that all substance is necessarily infinite, we are told by Spinoza, who understood by substance that which exists in itself, and is conceived through itself; i.e. the knowledge of which does not require the knowledge of anything antecedent to it.

This substance of Spinoza is just the matter of Materialists.  With him most likely, with them certainly, matter and substance are convertible terms.  They have no objection to the word substance so long as it is the sign of something substantial; for substantiality implies materiality.  Whether we say—­Substance exists, and is conceived through itself; i.e. the knowledge of which does not require the knowledge of anything antecedent to it, or—­Matter exists and is conceived through itself; i.e. ’the knowledge of which does not require the knowledge of anything antecedent to itself’—­our meaning is exactly the same.