surrounded by Christians. "The same holds true", remarks the Church Times, "of her own form of Theism, should orthodox Christianity disappear in its favor". Each creed thinks itself necessary to morality and despises all which are more liberal than itself.
Of all creeds, the purely Theistic is the most inconsequent, depending as it does for its "proofs" on the varying emotions of men. "Intuition", "feeling", these for it are the revealers of the Divine, and denying all special revelation, all Divine Incarnation, it leaves each individual to "feel" God for himself and to receive direct inspiration. This plan is obviously the negation of all argument, of all demonstration; a man's feelings may sway his own judgment; they can never convince the judgment of anyone else.
Miss Cobbe takes for her text some words of Mr. Justice Stephen on religion:
"We can get on very well without one; for though the view of life which science is opening to us gives us nothing to worship, it gives us an infinite number of things to enjoy. . . . The world seems to me a very good world, if it would only last. Love, friendship, ambition, science, literature, art, politics, commerce, professions, trades, and a thousand other matters, will go equally well, as far as I can see, whether there is or is not a God and a future state."
She proceeds to descant on "the chief consequences which might be anticipated to follow the downfall of such religion as at present prevails in civilised Europe and America", and defines religion as "definite faith in a living and righteous God; and, as a corollary therefrom, in the survival of the human soul after death. In other words, I mean by 'religion' that nucleus of simple Theism which is common to every form of natural religion, of Christianity and Judaism." A good deal of dispute might arise as to the meaning of the word "righteous" in connexion with any God common to natural religion, Christianity, and Judaism. The brutal and blood-thirsty Jahveh of the Hebrews was certainly not righteous, and Miss Cobbe does not believe in the God who walked in the Garden of Eden, ate calf with Abraham, showed his back to Moses, and presided over the slaughters of the Canaanites and the Amalekites. It is not straightforward to pretend that her highly-civilised nineteenth century God is identical with the brutal God of Moses and of Joshua, nor is her one indivisible God
