God the Invisible King by H.G. Wells

Almost all Agnostic and Atheistical writings that show any fineness and generosity of spirit, have this tendency to become as it were the statement of an anonymous God. Everything is said that a religious writer would say -- except that God is not named. Religious metaphors abound. It is as if they accepted the living body of religion but denied the bones that held it together -- as they might deny the bones of a friend. It is true, they would admit, the body moves in a way that implies bones in its every movement, but -- WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THOSE BONES.

The disputes in theory -- I do not say the difference in reality -- between the modern believer and the atheist or agnostic -- becomes at times almost as impalpable as that subtle discussion dear to students of physics, whether the scientific "ether" is real or a formula. Every material phenomenon is consonant with and helps to define this ether, which permeates and sustains and is all things, which nevertheless is perceptible to no sense, which is reached only by an intellectual process. Most minds are disposed to treat this ether as a reality. But the acutely critical mind insists that what is only so attainable by inference is not real; it is no more than "a formula that satisfies all phenomena."