I would not forget that the nature of a denial may be such as to involve a strong positive.
To Faber it seemed the true and therefore right thing, to deny the existence of any such being as men call God.

I heartily admit that such denial may argue a nobler condition than that of the man who will reason for the existence of what he calls a Deity, but omits to order his way after what he professes to believe His will.

At the same time, his conclusion that he was not bound to believe in any God, seemed to lift a certain weight off the heart of the doctor--the weight, namely, that gathers partly from the knowledge of having done wrong things, partly from the consciousness of not _being_ altogether right.

It would be very unfair, however, to leave the impression that this was the origin of all the relief the doctor derived from the conclusion.

For thereby he got rid, in a great measure at least, of the notion--horrible in proportion to the degree in which it is actually present to the mind, although, I suspect, it is not, in a true sense, credible to any mind--of a cruel, careless, unjust Being at the head of affairs.