characteristic of the movement; some emphasize one thing, some another. Often it is conceived wholly, or almost wholly, as a metaphysical theory, which represents God as the Creator of the world, but now as withdrawn and separate from it and its concerns; it is the absentee God of literature. There is no foundation in fact for this interpretation of Deism. With the exception of Herbert of Cherbury the Deists scarcely touched philosophical problems. Often Deism is presented as an undefined movement that fostered a hostile attitude toward the supernatural in religion. In one sense this is true. And frequently it is defined as a type of unbelief, as a reconstruction of Christianity that leaves little that is vitally characteristic of the Christian religion. These definitions, though they vary greatly, agree in one respect; they are almost wholely negative, they represent Deism as other than or as contrary to some accepted standard; but they fail to say what it really was. These more or less popular definitions of Deism are wrong or inadequate. Deism was a phase in the history of religious thought; it should therefore be defined historically with reference to the thought of the age in which it flourished. A proper definition should show how it is related to and how it is distinguished from the historical background on which it appeared. There were two focal concepts in the speculative thinking of this period, which were not always clearly distinguished, though almost everybody used them. It was the fashion then, in the best circles of learned men, to appeal to nature and reason, to think that beliefs and institutions were adequately grounded