Are even those who have no ideas of God Atheists?
No; because then all men would be so, because no one has a clear idea of the Divinity."[6] A more recent writer, the ABBE LAMENNAIS, is equally explicit, and very much for the same reasons: "The Atheist himself has his own notion of God, only he transfers it from the Creator to the creation; he ascribes to finite, relative, and contingent being the properties of the necessary Being; he confounds the work with the workman.

Matter being, according to him, eternal, is endowed with certain primitive, unchangeable properties, which, having their own reason in themselves, are themselves the reasons of all successive phenomena;" and "it matters little whether he rejects the _name_ of God or not," or "whether he has, or has not, an explicit knowledge of Him;" he cannot but acknowledge an eternal First Cause.[7] And so a whole host of Pantheistic Spiritualists will indignantly disclaim the imputation of Atheism, and even attempt to vindicate Spinoza himself from the odious charge.[8] Nay, some of the grossest Materialists, such as Atkinson and Martineau, while they explicitly deny the existence of a living personal God, will affirm that Pantheism is not Atheism.[9] Now, unquestionably, if by Theism we mean nothing more than the recognition of an active power in nature,--such a power as may or may not be identified with motion, and as may be designated indifferently as the Divinity, or as the Soul of the world,--the possibility of Atheism may be effectually excluded; but this only serves to show the indispensable necessity of a correct definition of the terms which are employed in this discussion, since it is perfectly manifest that they are not used in the same sense by the contending parties, and that consequently the disputants are not arguing about the same thing.

For Pantheism, whatever form it may assume, and whatever language it may adopt, can be regarded in no other light than as a system of Atheism, by all who have any definite conception of what is meant when we either affirm or deny the existence and government of a living, intelligent, personal God.
As Atheism has appeared in several distinct forms, it is necessary to consider both its _generic nature_ and its _specific varieties_.

It may be defined, generally, as that state of mind which involves either _the denial_ or _the doubt_ of the existence and government of God as an all-perfect Being, distinct from the created universe; or which leads to the habitual forgetfulness and wilful neglect of His claims as our Creator, Preserver, and Lord.

This state of mind, whether evinced by words or by actions, contains in it the essence of Atheism, and it is recognized in Scripture, in each of its two aspects, as an evil alike natural and prevalent.