I do not speak now of atheism, dogmatic, self-satisfied, insolent cynic.  I speak especially to-night of a form of unbelief far more attractive, which is spreading, I believe, among people often of high intellect, often of virtuous life, often of great attainments in art, science, or literature.  Such repudiate, and justly, the name of theists:  but they decline, and justly, the name of atheists.  They would—­the finest and purest spirits among them—­accept only too heartily the whole of the Psalm which I have chosen for my text, save its ascription and the last verse.  We too—­they would say—­do not wish to be high-minded, and dogmatize, and assert, and condemn.  We too do not wish to meddle with matters too high for us, or for any human intellect.  We too wish to refrain ourselves from asserting what—­however pleasant—­we cannot prove; and to wean ourselves—­however really painful the process—­from the milk, the mere child’s food, on which Mother Church has brought up the nations of Europe for the last 1500 years.  But for that very reason, as for asking us to trust in The Lord, either for this life, or an eternal life to come, do not ask that of us.

We do not say that there is no God; no Providence of God; no life beyond the grave:  only we say, that we cannot find them.  They may exist:  or they may not.  But to us; and as we believe to all mankind if they used their reason aright, they are unthinkable, and therefore unknowable.  God we see not:  but this we see—­Man, tortured by a thousand ills; and then, alas, perishing just as the dumb beasts perish.  We see death, decay, pain, sorrow, bereavement, weakness; and these produced, not merely by laws of nature, in which, however terrible, we could stoically acquiesce; but worse still, by accident—­the sports of seeming chances—­and those often so slight and mean.  Man in his fullest power, woman in her highest usefulness, the victim not merely of the tempest or the thunderstroke, but of a fallen match, a stumbling horse.

Therefore the sight of so much human woe, without a purpose, and without a cause, is too much for them:  as, without faith in God, it ought to be too much for us.

And therefore in their poetry and in their prose—­and they are masters, some of them, both of poetry and of prose—­there is a weary sadness, a tender despair, which one must not praise:  yet which one cannot watch without sympathy and affection.  For the mystery of human vanity and vexation of spirit; the mystery which weighed down the soul of David, and of Solomon, and of him who sang the song of Job, and of St Paul, and of St Augustine, and all the great Theologians of old time, is to them nought but utter darkness.  For they see not yet, as our great modern poet says,

            Hands
   Athwart the darkness, shaping man.

They see not yet athwart the darkness a face, most human yet divine, of utter sympathy and love; and hear not yet—­oh let me say once more not yet of such fine souls—­the only words which can bring true comfort to one who feels for his fellow-men, amid the terrible chances and changes of this mortal life—­