greatest is charity.

One enthusiast cries out _un Roi_ and another _un Dieu_. The reality of
the king I admit, because I feel his power. Against my feeling and my
experience I cannot argue, for upon these sensations is built all
argument. But not all the wondrous works of the creation, as I hear the
visible operations of nature called, convince me in the least of the
existence of a Deity. By nature I mean to express the whole of what I
see and feel, that whole, I call self-existent from all eternity; I
admit a principle of intelligence and design, but I deny that principle
to be extraneous from itself. My creed in fine is the same with that of
the Roman poet;

_"Deus est ubicunque movemur."_

If then I am admitted to explain my deity in this sense, I am not an
atheist, nor can any one else in the world be such. The _vis naturae_,
the perpetual industry, intelligence and provision of nature must be
apparent to all who see, feel or think. I mean to distinguish this
active, intelligent and designing principle, inherent as much in matter
as the properties of gravity or any elastic, attractive or repulsive
power, from any extraneous foreign force and design in an invisible
agent, supreme though hidden lord and maker over all effects and
appearances that present themselves to us in the course of nature. The
last supposition makes the universe and all other organised matter a
machine made or contrived by the arbitrary will of another Being, which
other Being is called God; and my theory makes a God of this universe,
or admits no other God or designing principle than matter itself and
its various organisations.