Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 11 Critical Writings.djvu/60

2 man. Thus, what at first is the abstractest of thoughts, by and by becomes the concretest of things. If a man concludes there is no God at all, that conclusion, negative though it is, will have an immense influence; subjectively on his feelings and opinions, objectively on his outward conduct; subjectively as the theory of the universe; objectively as the principle of practical life.

Speculative Theism is the belief in the existence of God, in one form or another; and I call him a Theist who believes in any God. By Atheism I mean absolute denial of the existence of any God. A man may deny actuality to the Hebrew idea of God, to the Christian idea of God, or to the Mahometan idea of God, and yet be no atheist.

The Hebrews formed a certain conception of a being with many good qualities, and some extraordinarily bad qualities, and called it Jehovah, and said, "That is God: it is the only God." The majority of Christians form a certain conception of a being with more good qualities than are ascribed to Jehovah, but with some most atrociously evil qualities, and call it Trinity, or Unity, and say—"That is God: it is the only God."

Now a man may deny the actuality of either or both these ideas of God, and yet be no atheist. He may do so because he is more of a theist than the majority of Hebrews or Christians; because he has a higher development of the religious faculty, and has thereby obtained a better idea of God. Thus the Old Testament prophets, with a religious development often far in advance of their Gentile neighbours, declared that Baal was no God. Of course the worshipper of Baal called the Hebrew prophets atheists, for they denied all the God that Gentiles knew. Paul, in the New Testament, more of a theist than the Greeks and Asiatics about him, with a larger religious development than they dreamed of, said—"an Idol is nothing." That is, there is no divine being which corresponds exactly to the qualities ascribed to any material idol. Their idea of God, said Paul, lacked actuality; it was a personal or national whimsey; not a perfect subjective representation of the objective fact of the universe; but only a mistaken notion of that fact.

If a man has outgrown the Hebrew, or common Christian idea of God, he may say what Paul said of the