attributed to them, and were performed for the purpose of recommending them to their favor.

Whatever immoralities in practice may be charged upon Christians, no reproach is thereby attached to the religion itself, because there can be no pretence, that they are authorized, or countenanced in the smallest degree, either by its express laws, or by its general spirit. All that it proves is, not that Christianity is bad, but that they are bad Christians; not that their religion is imperfect, but that they are so, because they are not what it requires them to be. But this cannot be said of the licentiousness practised at the heathen festivals. To the grossest excesses, which marked the celebration of some parts of their worship, no censure was affixed, no shame was attached; they were authorized by the religion itself, and actually made a part of it.

Scarcely is any consideration of more weight to show how much a revelation was needed to teach men even the great truths of Natural Religion, than the singular fact, that, in countries unenlightened by revelation, the progress of knowledge in religion has borne no proportion to the progress that has been made in every other kind of knowledge. Religion has seldom, if ever, kept pace with advancement in knowledge. Usually, indeed, has it declined in ages the most enlightened by science, and refined in manners. The age of atheism has been, not that of ignorance and barbarism, but that in which learning flourished, and the arts and refinement were carried to their highest perfection. It has not been the stinted product of a sterile soil and a barren season; but the

rank growth of a luxuriant soil, and the monstrous production of a season prolific to excess.

In the Jewish nation, for example, it was not in the early and rude period of their story, but in the courtly days of David and Solomon, that we read of those, who, rejecting all religion, said "there is no God," and with the Sadducees of a later age, rejected the doctrine of angels and spirits, denied the doctrine of a resurrection, and that of a soul to survive the body.

In Greece, also, it was not in the dark ages that preceded the dawn of science, nor yet in its early twilight; it was in the midst of its meridian splendor, that the atheistic doctrines of Democritus, and the dissolute maxims of the Epicurean school sprung up and prevailed. In Rome, again,—when was it that the elegant pen of Lucretius was employed in decorating with the charms of poetry the cold doctrines of an atheistic philosophy? It was just at that time, when learning and refinement were attaining their highest perfection. And then too it was, that the same loose principles began to be openly avowed by many of the leading characters of the nation, so as to hasten the corruption, that eventually brought about its destruction.

In the East, the sect of Buddha, the Oriental Epicurus, is comparatively of modern origin, and is the offspring, not of uninquiring ignorance, but of philosophy. It sprung up long after the disciples of Bramha had been in possession of the doctrines of atheistic philosophy. An uncreated world, and a perishable soul, these were not the early doctrines of a rude and

uninstructed state; - they were the proud discoveries of science, or the impious invention of profligacy, at an enlightened period.

In Europe, to what period will you look for the prevalence of speculative atheism? When will you find it attaining so rank and alarming a growth, as at that very period, which assumed to itself emphatically the title of "the age of reason?" Not when reason was bound, as for ages it had been, in chains of superstition, and the human mind was covered with thick darkness, was this phenomenon exhibited; but when reason and philosophy, freed from all restraints, were thought to have attained their proudest eminence. It was reserved for those, who, rejecting the light of revelation, professed to put themselves under the guidance of reason alone, to revive in the enlightened eightteenth century the gloomy doctrines of the ancient atheism; to be satisfied with the account of a creation without a creator, an infinite effect without a cause, the eternal sleep of death, a soul to perish with the body.

The use of such views and representations as have now been given should be, not to teach us to undervalue reason and the light of nature; but to give us a juster sense of their true value; to teach us how far and in what respects they are to be relied upon, what limits there are to their sufficiency, and with what readiness and thankfulness we should accept whatever aid is offered to supply their deficiency. They furnish some support at least to the credibility of a revelation from God to supply the wants of nature,

And as religion is of unspeakable importance to every human being, involving the highest interests of every individual of the great family of men; any instruction in divine things, which claims to be of divine origin, asserting God to be its author, and professing to teach the doctrine of eternal life, may well be expected to have the evidences faithfully examined, upon which are founded its claims.

CHAPTER II.

A REVELATION SUSCEPTIBLE OF PROOF.

Ir there be a Revelation from God, there can be no doubt that it must be susceptible of satisfactory proof, -such proof as we deem a sufficient ground of a reasonable faith.

Now, that a Revelation from God is not in itself an incredible thing, so as to be incapable of proof by any kind of evidence, is probably an opinion from which none will dissent. There will be no question whether He who created the mind of man can have access to it, so as to make communications of knowledge to it, in another way than by the natural and usual operation of its faculties. Of those who deny or doubt its reality, none, I presume, will deny its possibility, or pretend that it implies a contradiction or an absurdity. By one of the most eminent skeptics of the last century, it has been readily admitted, that "an extraordinary action of God on the mind, which the word inspiration is now used to denote, is not more inconceivable than the ordinary action of mind on body, or of body on mind." It is, then, in itself, and previous to experience, as credible that the one should take place as the other. Our belief, therefore, of its having

*Bolingbroke, Works, Vol. II. p. 468.