Hebrew race; a God so loving that, as he himself says, he deceived his own messengers and put a lying spirit in the mouths of the prophet: a very loving God, truly, yet this is the God of love, whose disappearance would be so terrible a loss to the hearts of his children. A God of wisdom? that is, a wise God who made his master-piece man so badly, that he fell to pieces at the first temptation; a wise God whose whole work had to be destroyed because he had made it so badly that he himself got out of patience with it; a wise God, whose every aim is thwarted both by man and Devil; a wise God, whose wise plans are such a failure, that having drowned the world once, and tried his method over again, he has again failed so dismally that he is going to burn it all up, and make another new heaven and new earth, which, judging by past experience, are as likely to fail as their predecessors. Truly, this God has shown his wisdom very signally. A God of power? that is, a strong God, whose projects are foiled, whose plans are defeated, whose will is not done; a strong God who cannot even guard his poor creatures from a Devil, who appears, if we are to judge by results, to be more widely-present and more powerful than his own Maker. Truly a very strong God. The gospel of Secularism has no God. It sees a great universe, and knows only that it is; it believes in no origin, because there is no reason for such a belief. Uncaused and self-existent Natural order rolls on; the Secularist studies it, because, being himself a part of that order, his happiness lies in conformity with it; he reverences it, as the mother who has given him birth; he recognises the limitations imposed on him by the conditions of his being, and, instead of worshipping the Unknown, he studies it as far as he can, and devotes his whole strength to that for which his faculties fit him.
But the gospel of Christianity is good news because it speaks of a Father in Heaven, and, in painting his fair picture, it forgets the terrible blots with which this same God is disfigured. It appeals to the feeling of weakness and dependence in man, and it is here that its true power lies. A Father whose tender mercies are over all his works? we will believe it when sinking ships, and destroying pestilences, and heart-rending accidents, can be proved never to have taken place. A Father who loves his children? we will believe it when his children no longer starve and pine, when the noblest of the sons of men are no longer
