Excerpt from The Trial of Theism
An origin of Nature is inconceivable, the existence of Nature is evident. The manifestations of Nature can be observed-the ultimate causes of this manifestations are yet untraced. The Students of a 'First Cause' have as yet announced no indisputable result. The Theological Alchemists have been at work in the Laboratories of the Churches for ages-they arc engaged in their incantations and compoundings still. Every seventh day the crucibles are held over the fires of a hundred thousand altars; but the Philosopher's Stone of Creation has not yet been produced.
This is the statement of Atheism. It is questioned and confronted in these pages with the counter statements of Theism. The reader will soon comprehend this; all we beg of him is, not to confound Atheism with 'Secularism,' which is an entirely different question, requiring to be treated in a separate volume. It is not necessary to Secularism to say - 'God does not exist nor to question the alleged proofs of such existence. The sphere of Secularism is irrespective of Theism or Atheism, or the Bible. Its province is the ethics of Nature. It does not declare why Nature exists, or bow it exists. Nature is. Secularism commences with this ample, indisputable, and infinite fact of wonder, study, and progress.
If anything written on the following pages give any Theist the impression that- his views, devoutly held, are treated with dogmatism or contempt, the writer retracts the offending phrases. Theological opinion is now so diversified, that he has long insisted on the propriety of classifying, in controversy, the schools of thought, and identifying the particular type of each person-so that any remarks applied to him alone, shall not be found 'at large' reflecting upon those to whom they were never intended to apply. If just cause of offence is found in this book, it will be through some inadvertent neglect of this rule.
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