That such a notion should exist at all, is mainly the fault of the mass of so-called religious people, for they seem to believe in, and certainly proclaim such a God.
In their excuse it may be urged they tell the tale as it was told to them; but the fault lies in this, that, with the gospel in their hands, they have yet lived in such disregard of its precepts, that they have never discovered their representation of the God of Truth to be such, that the more honest a man is, the less can he accept it.

That the honest man, however, should not thereupon set himself to see whether there might not be a true God notwithstanding, whether such a God was not conceivable consistently with things as they are, whether the believers had not distorted the revelation they professed to follow; especially that he should prefer to believe in some sort of _vitalic_ machine, equally void of beneficence and malevolence, existing because it can not help it, and giving birth to all sorts of creatures, men and women included, because it can not help it--must arise from a condition of being, call it spiritual, moral, or mental--I can not be obliging enough to add _cerebral,_ because so I should nullify my conclusion, seeing there would be no substance left wherein it could be wrought out--for which the man, I can not but think, will one day discover that he was to blame--for which a living God sees that he is to blame, makes all the excuse he can, and will give the needful punishment to the uttermost lash.
There are some again, to whom the idea of a God perfect as they could imagine Him in love and devotion and truth, seems, they say, too good to be true: such have not yet perceived that no God any thing less than absolutely glorious in loveliness would be worth believing in, or such as the human soul could believe in.

But Faber did not belong to this class--still less to that portion of it whose inconsolable grief over the lack of such a God may any day blossom into hope of finding Him.

He was in practice at one with that portion of it who, accepting things at their worst, find alleviation for their sorrows in the strenuous effort to make the best of them; but he sought to content himself with the order of things which, blind and deaf and non-willing, he said had existed for evermore, most likely--the thing was hardly worth discussing; blind, for we can not see that it sees; deaf, for we can not hear that it hears; and without will, for we see no strife, purpose, or change in its going! There was no God, then, and people would be more comfortable to know it.
In any case, as there was none, they ought to know it.

As to his certainty of there being none, Faber felt no desire to find one, had met with no proof that there was one, and had reasons for supposing that there was none.