[Peerpress-xml] Eople having faith in the supernatural

[Gieck]

Y to feel the eternity of something. To rid oneself of that feeling is
impossible. Nature, or something not nature must ever have been, is a
conclusion to which, what poets call Fate-- Leads the willing and drags
the unwilling. But does this undeniable truth make against Atheism? Far
from it--so far, indeed, as to make for it: the reason is no mystery. Of
matter we have ideas clear, precise, and indispensable, whereas, of
something not matter we cannot have any idea whatever, good, bad, or
indifferent. The Universe is extraordinary, no doubt, but so much of it
as acts upon us is perfectly conceivable, whereas, any thing within,
without, or apart from the Universe is perfectly inconceivable. The
notion of necessarily existing matter seems to the Author of this
Apology fatal to belief in God; that is, if by the word God be
understood something not matter, for 'tis precisely because priests were
unable to reconcile such belief with the idea of matter's self-existence
or eternity, that they took to imagining a 'First Cause.' In the
'forlorn hope' of clearing the difficulty of necessarily existing
_matter_, they assent to a necessarily existing _spirit_; and when the
nature of spirit is demanded from these assertors of its existence they
are constrained to avow 
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