The Heavenly Father | Page 2

doctrines are those of the fall and ruin of man by nature, the necessity for Divine agency in his recovery, his need of propitiation by the sacrifice of the God-Man--l'Homme-Dieu. These truths are explicitly stated by the Author in his former course of lectures--La Vie Eternelle,[1] in which, while discoursing eloquently on that eternal life which is the portion of the righteous, he does not shrink from declaring his belief in its awful counterpart, the eternal condemnation of the wicked.
"The offence of the Cross" has not "ceased," and many finding that these are the opinions of this Author, will perhaps lay down his book as unworthy of their attention: yet the editor, biographer, and expositor of the great French thinker, Maine de Biran, will not need introduction to the intellectual magnates of our own or of any country. The translator will be thankful, if some of those,--the youth more especially,--of his own country, who have been dazzled by the glare of false science, shall find in this work a help to the reassuring of their faith, while they learn in a fresh example that there are men quite competent to deal with the profoundest problems which can exercise our thoughts, who at the same time have come to a conviction,--compatible as they believe with principles of the clearest reason,--of the truth of those very doctrines which form the substance of evangelical Christianity. In saying this, the translator is far from claiming the Author as belonging to the same school of theology with himself: but differing with him on some important points, he has yet believed that this volume is calculated to be of much use in the present condition of religious thought in England, and in this hope and prayer he commends it to the blessing of Him, whose being and attributes, as our God and Father in Jesus Christ, are therein asserted and defended.
GENEVA, November, 1865.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] A translation of this work, by an English lady, has been published by Mr. Dalton, 28, Cockspur street.

CONTENTS.
LECTURE I. PAGE OUR IDEA OF GOD 1
LECTURE II.
LIFE WITHOUT GOD 43
PART I.--THE INDIVIDUAL 45

PART II.--SOCIETY 72
LECTURE III.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM 117
LECTURE IV.
NATURE 175
LECTURE V.
HUMANITY 245
LECTURE VI.
THE CREATOR 297
LECTURE VII.
THE FATHER 340

LECTURE I.
OUR IDEA OF GOD.
(At Geneva, 17th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 11th Jan. 1864.)
GENTLEMEN,
Some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, a German writer published a piece of verse which began in this way: "Our hearts are oppressed with the emotions of a pious sadness, at the thought of the ancient Jehovah who is preparing to die." The verses were a dirge upon the death of the living God; and the author, like a well educated son of the nineteenth century, bestowed a few poetic tears upon the obsequies of the Eternal.
I was young when these strange words met my eyes, and they produced in me a kind of painful bewilderment, which has, I think, for ever engraven them in my memory. Since then, I have had occasion to learn by many tokens that this fact was not at all an exceptional one, but that men of influence, famous schools, important tendencies of the modern mind, are agreed in proclaiming that the time of religion is over, of religion in all its forms, of religion in the largest sense of the word. Beneath the social disturbances of the day, beneath the discussions of science, beneath the anxiety of some and the sadness of others, beneath the ironical and more or less insulting joy of a few, we read at the foundation of many intellectual manifestations of our time these gloomy words: "Henceforth no more God for humanity!" What may well send a shudder of fright through society--more than threatening war, more than possible revolution, more than the plots which may be hatching in the dark against the security of persons or of property--is, the number, the importance, and the extent of the efforts which are making in our days to extinguish in men's souls their faith in the living God.
This fear, Gentlemen, I should wish to communicate to you, but I should wish also to confine it within its just limits. Religion (I take this term in its most general acceptation) is not, as many say that it is, either dead or dying. I want no other proof of this than the pains which so many people are taking to kill it. It is often those who say that it is dead, or falling rapidly into dissolution, who apply themselves to this work. They are too generous, no doubt, to make a violent attack upon a corpse; and it is easy to understand, judging by the intensity of their exertions, that in their own opinion they have something else to do than to give a finishing stroke to the dying.
Present circumstances are serious, not for religion itself, which