THE following Dialogue is an attempt to put forward, in popular form, the chief arguments from reason by which the existence of God is proved, and to show the weakness and inconsistency of the objections most commonly urged against it. I must ask my readers to remember that the conversations as narrated are supposed to be but an abstract of the discussions which would be required to convince under ordinary circumstances a sceptic of such long standing as the interlocutor to whom I have given the name of Cholmeley. If he retreats from his position with a readiness which would scarcely find a counterpart in real life, the apparent unreality is due to the necessity of conciseness and to the opportunity that written language affords of pondering over arguments which, if spoken would only sink in gradually, and after a frequency of repetition wearisome in print.
The treatment of such a subject as that about which I have written has another practical difficulty -- that there are no two men to whom precisely the same objections occur with equal force. All that is possible for one who seeks to deal with it in popular shape is to choose out so far as he can those which are most common and most mischievous to the generality of men. His temptation is to be continually drawn off into further rejoinders and unnecessary subtleties. And in seeking to avoid this danger he is liable to expose himself to the charge of not sounding to its depths the intellectual Charybdis of unbelief.
I must therefore throw myself on the indulgence of my readers. If I have passed over any solid serious arguments, or any objections that I should have done well to meet, I will try and remedy such omission hereafter.
31, Farm Street, W
Easter, 1887.