Ch. 2: Common Ground - Page 2

this; eternal for the future as long as the universe shall exist; ever changing, yet the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. And I will show this with so little ambiguity that it shall be perceived not as a phantom or hallucination following upon a painful straining of the mind and a vain endeavour to give coherency to incoherent and inconsistent ideas, but with the same ease, comfort, and palpable flesh-and-blood clearness with which we see those near to us ; whom, though we see them at the best as through a glass darkly, we still see face to face, even as we are ourselves seen.

I will also show in what way this Being exercises a moral government over the world, and rewards and punishes us according to His own laws.

Having done this I shall proceed to compare this conception of God with those that are currently accepted, and will endeavour to show that the ideas now current are in truth efforts to grasp the one on which I shall here insist. Finally, I shall persuade the reader that the differences between the so-called atheist and the so-called theist are differences rather about words than things, inasmuch as not even the most prosaic of modern scientists will be inclined to deny the existence of this God, while few theists will feel that this, the natural conception of God, is a less worthy one than that to which they have been accustomed.