Thousands of new settlements in our land which have been thus demoralized, have, in this manner, been civilized and purified by Christian institutions.

And if, in our cities, the statistics of poverty, and crime, and licentiousness, and loathsome disease, and unutterable woe, be examined, where will their victims be found,— under the auspices of the Bible and Christian institutions, or under the auspices of infidelity, and in the haunts of inebriation, and impurity, and cursing, and blasphemy, and murder ?

I close this lecture with several remarks or inferences. And, first, it is manifest, in the light of this discussion, that reason and the light of nature are not sufficient to meet the exigencies of the personal, social, and civil welfare of our race; and that a revelation, and divine institutions and aids, are indispensable to the temporal and eternal welfare of men.

It may be said, that the difference of condition between heathen and Christian lands is not occasioned by their different religions. But no other causes are apparent for those opposite results; and the adaptation of Christianity and idolatry to produce these opposite moral results is as manifest as is the adaptation of natural causes to produce their effects.

I am aware that it is boastingly said and reiterated, that the Gospel and the church of God have had their day; and, though they may have mitigated the evils of barbarous society, are wholly incompetent to afford the illumination, and fulfil the vocations, of reason and philosophy.

It might be well to publish the known abortive efforts of the three French revolutions, and of the recent infidel associations in Europe and in our nation.

I will only say, in the language of Holy Writ, "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a

green bay tree; yet he passed away, and lo! he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found." It will be in time for infidels to boast, when the first infidel nation shall have rivalled our own in all that appertains to the highest personal, social, and civil welfare of man, for some twenty, fifty, or one hundred years.

Will it be contended that heathen lands are, and ever have been, as happy as Christian nations? If infidels really believe this, let them, in imagination, as the French did by legislation, abolish the being of God, and burn the Bible, and substitute the theatre for the Sabbath, and establish for the children of our nation foundling hospitals, and provide professional nurses, instead of the warm bosom and heart of wives and mothers, and proclaim nature as the only God, and the family a den of mere animals, and write over the gateway of all burying-grounds that death is an eternal sleep. Let them abolish our happy republic, and establish, in its stead, the Pope, and the autocrats of Russia and Austria. Let our wives and daughters be slaves and drudges, and burn on the funeral pile of their husbands; and their infants be strangled, or burnt, or given to alligators in our bayous and rivers. Let purity cease from all families, and impurity mingle in our worship of nature, and pollute our poetry and paintings and statuary, and pour like a mighty river through our literature from the press. And let our theatres be stained, annually, by the blood of thousands of gladiators, trained to fight and die for the amusement of the most refined gentlemen and ladies of our nation. Let the feudal system come back, in all its pleasures and beauties and glories, in which kings and nobles shall hold all the lands, and all beside be tenants at will, and most of them living on black bread, or potatoes,

with seldom a mouthful of meat, and always on the borders of starvation; in sickness and old age, to be sent to the poorhouse, or abandoned to famine and neglect.

Let Juggernaut pilgrimages pave our roads, for twenty miles, with human bones, and create around them an atmosphere of stench,-where dogs and jackals and vultures are gentle, by moving among human beings, and feeding on human flesh; and where children have no home, but beside their dead fathers and mothers.

And let our newspapers, in their obituaries, chronicle the death of Mr. - and give notice, that the burning will be day, at o'clock; that his beautiful young wife

on

will burn with him; and, should her courage fail, and she attempt to escape, the dishonored family, and even her own son, will force her back into the flames!

LECTURE VII.

THE REPUBLICAN ELEMENTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

IT is not uncommon for infidels to insist that the Old Testament is unfriendly to the liberty and equality of man, the joint product of despotism and priestcraft, and destined to pass away before the rising illuminations of the present day; that it was formed in a dark, superstitious, and barbarous age of the world, and is inadequate to the further advancement of society in the present enlightened age.

Such opinions can result only from profound unacquaintance with the contents, history, and practical influence, of this most authentic and venerable book; a book with which the more we become acquainted, the more we shall find that it has neither rival nor equal.

The most effectual way to remove this unhappy misconception and prejudice will be, to illustrate the design and efficacy of the Old Testament, in the production of such a state of liberty and equality as never, before or since, blessed the earth, save, perhaps, in our own nation. Instead of its being unfriendly to civil liberty, we possess in the Old Testament the first pattern that ever existed of national liberty and equality. It is not generally known, and would scarcely be believed, without inspection, that the Mosaic institute comprehends, in a high degree, all the elements and outlines of a federal national republican government, more resembling our own than any government on earth ever did, or now does.

REPUBLICAN ELEMENTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 177

It is but an epitome of this government that we can give in this lecture. But if we can render a concise account of its principles and relations intelligible at one view, it will be better than a more prolix description; and this is what we shall attempt to do.

It was the object of God, in the Mosaic institute, to fortify against the encroachments of idolatry, and stop the march of despotism, and lust, and blood, which, in its train, has ever darkened, and polluted, and cursed our world.

At the time of its establishment, the knowledge of God was fading from the world; the holy fire was going out from the hearts of men, and from his sacred altars; and all flesh was again corrupting its way before God. Nation after nation had turned their back upon him, and his commandments and worship. It was, that he might not be ejected from his own world, and all remembrance of his being and government be blotted out by his rebel subjects, that, in infinite compassion, he interposed to fortify the knowledge of his being, character, and worship, till the desire of nations, the Messiah, should

come.

For this purpose, he called Abraham to be the father of a nation to whose care should be committed his Word and worship, and which, like a city compactly builded, should stand on its rocky base, and defy the assaults of an apostate world.

After the bondage of his descendants for four hundred years in Egypt, Moses was raised up to be their lawgiver and captain; to plant them in Canaan, and to establish institutions for the preservation of true religion, till Christ, the Messiah, should visit the world, and die for its redemption.

The laws of Moses, revealed to him by God, and recorded in the Bible, include the three following classes:

1. The moral law, which is obligatory upon all men, and