supernatural, unsympathetic Supreme Being, unsympathetic because sympathy implies fellow-feeling and equality, and these can never be between Man and God.
After this introductory statement, Miss Cobbe proceeds to deal with the subject-matter of her enquiry, the changes which may be expected to result from the "downfall of religion in Europe and America". The mere commonplace scientific student would be content to study facts and to deduce conclusions from them; but Miss Cobbe is an Intuitionist, and has methods far less laborious, if more expeditious. She alleges that "after noting the orderly and estimable conduct of many of them [undevout people], the observer might per contra, not unfairly surmise that they would continue to act just as they do at present were religion universally exploded. But ere such a conclusion could be legitimately drawn from the meritorious lives of non-religious men in the present order of society, we should be allowed (it is a familiar remark) to see the behavior of a whole nation of Atheists. Our contemporaries are no more fair samples of the outcome of Atheism than a little party of English youths who had lived for a few years in Central Africa would be samples of Negroes. It would take several thousand years to make a full-blooded Atheist out of the scion of forty generations of Christians." This is a fair sample of the argumentative style of Miss Cobbe. She admits that many Atheists—her "undevout" persons—are "orderly and estimable"; now a very large number of "devout" persons are neither orderly nor estimable. Some persons who do not believe in God nor in immortality are moral, some who believe in both are also moral, while many who believe in both are utterly immoral. Such are the facts. The obvious conclusion—by the logical "method of difference"—is that the two thing, belief and conduct, are not causally related. But logic is not Miss Cobbe's forte, and she refers the moral conduct of Atheists to "forty [why forty?] generations of Christians". A Pagan of the type of Socrates or of Plato might remark that "it would take several thousand years to make a full-blooded Christian out of the scion of forty generations of Pagans", and as "several thousand years" have not elapsed since the birth of Christ, he might, arguing on Miss Cobbe's model, allege that the Christians of to-day had not yet worked out the degrading results of their creed. Still more forcibly does the tu quoque style
