Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1842, BY HENRY WARE, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the District of AN INQUIRY. CHAPTER I. A REVELATION NEEDED. We have before seen what is the power, and what the weakness of human reason. We have seen in the popular religions, and in the doctrines of heathen philosophy, how much it has actually achieved, and wherein it has failed. We have seen how little flattering to human vanity are the fairest monuments of its unaided power; how little support there is to the proud pretensions of its all-sufficiency; how little ground for appealing to its decisions from the authority of revelation; and how little reason to forsake the clear instructions of the Apostles and Prophets, for the mere opinions of the wisest of the ancient sages. For how full of absurdity and error has been the religion, not only of barbarians, but of nations the most enlightened and refined; and not only the popular opinions, on the subject of religion, but those of the great masters of human science. How vague and uncertain were their opinions; and how feeble, defective, and false appear to us their reasonings, not merely on abstruse and mysterious points of doctrine, but on those first principles of religious faith, which Christians regard as the very elements of the religion of nature! Compare the doctrines promulgated from Jerusalem by illiterate men, with those which issued from the celebrated schools of Athens. See the unlettered fishermen of Galilee going forth to make known through the world "the true God and eternal life," while Athens, the metropolis of learning, the arts, and refinement, the nursery of philosophers, and the school of wisdom, was found by one of those emissaries, wholly given up to idolatry, and as to religion, sunk in the most deplorable ignorance and superstition. Look over the catalogue of the popular gods of heathen antiquity. Consider their characters, as they are represented, not by Christians, who might be supposed to be prejudiced and partial judges, but by their own poets, historians, and sages, and those, the most respectable and enlightened. Take into view the impure and cruel rites required in the worship of some of them, compared with the purity and mildness of the Christian worship. Let it be recollected, that whatever violations of temperance, purity, or decency took place at their religious festivals, they were not, like similar excesses among those who live under the light of the gospel, acts of disobedience to him, whom they worship, unauthorized by the principles of their religion, and express violations of its laws. On the contrary, they were a part of their religion i tself; were thought to be acceptable to the beings whom they worshipped; were perfectly suited to the character |