often miserable. The mind was made for the acquisition of knowledge; and that knowledge concerning which they doubt -the being, character, law, and government of God-is, of all knowledge, the most interesting in itself, and the most important. Scepticism, therefore, dooms the intellect to sterility and famine, and the heart to vacancy, and the soul to suspense, on this most important subject.

It is also an entirely gratuitous deprivation of good, and endurance of evil.

The reiterated complaint, that there are so many opinions on the subject that nothing can be known, is as unfounded as it is pusillanimous. Were opinions the only source of knowledge, and to be weighed by the pound, or to be counted by the dozen, to decide by the suffrage of number what is true, the conclusion might be well founded; but facts and evidence are the material of knowledge, and the elementary truths of revelation are just as plain, and their results just as easily attained, and just as satisfactory and certain, as on any other subject. On the same condition that knowledge can be obtained in natural philosophy, it can be obtained in theology. Honest, persevering application is the universal condition of knowledge in every department of the kingdom of God; and the theological department is just as accessible to study, and just as certainly rewards industry, as any other. At the entrance it is written, — "If thou shalt incline thine ear to wisdom, and apply thy heart to understanding; if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasure; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God."*

*Prov. 2: 2-5.

By far the greatest portion of intelligent minds who have candidly and thoroughly investigated have escaped indecision and doubt, and multitudes by the same means have emerged from darkness, and come into the possession of a settled confidence. It were a libel on Heaven, to suppose that it has thrown wide open all the avenues of natural knowledge and lit up lamps about them, and shrouded with impenetrable darkness the threshold of moral governmentthe gateway of eternity. God is not the author of scepticism. He has not thrust out orbs of intelligence to roll about him in blackness of darkness. It is his desire to manifest himself to the minds which he has made, by pouring out floods of light around him, through the medium of his works and his word; and the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err.

To every sceptical man, I would say, then, in conclusion,— The subjects upon which your mind wavers are too important to be permitted to hang in doubt. You cannot prove that there is no God, or that the soul is not immortal, and accountable, and depraved, needing an atonement and sanctification, to escape everlasting ruin and obtain eternal life. But, before you reject the subject, you ought to be well ascertained that the inspiration of the Bible, and its representations of human character and the future state, are NOT true. Were your titles to your earthly estate doubtful, that fact would wake up all your energies, to put the matter out of doubt. If you had as much evidence in the night that your house is on fire, as you have that you are a sinner, and that God will by no means clear the guilty, would you cry "Peace!" and sleep on, because you did not know to a certainty that it was your house which was burning? Would you pass a road beset probably with robbers, because you had some doubts whether they would be there or not?

If

you had as much

evidence of poison in your cup as you have that Christianity is true and scepticism ruinous, would you drink, because you did not certainly know that there was death in it? It is not enough that you do not know the Bible to be true. You ought to know it to be false, before you reject it: seeing, if it is false, nothing is lost; and all is lost, if it be true, and you reject it.

LECTURE III.

THE PERILS OF ATHEISM TO THE NATION.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come: for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts; ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

SUCH are the men whose assault upon Christianity was predicted eighteen hundred years ago, and fulfilled by the atheistic conspiracy in France against the being and government of God. The result terrified the world, and sent the experimentalists howling out of time, or crying to the rocks and the mountains to fall upon them.

Recently, the disciples of this school, imported and indigenous, having recovered from their panic, wish to repeat their experiment upon our republican institutions. For, even here, the conjunction of circumstances is not right. Religion and law, those cancers of the body politic, remain; and need to be removed, that healthful atheistic liberty may, in its deeds of glory, rival all the past achievements of earth and heaven. It is not my purpose to insinuate that all men who are sceptical, or who are deists, or that even all who may

doubt or disbelieve the being of a God, have a distinct participation in the views and plans of political atheists, or are debased by the loathsome profligacy which characterizes generally the real adepts in this crusade against human and divine institutions. There are many whom the influence of Christianity has kept back from presumptuous sins, and who, by their past habits and existing alliances, would be withheld from an attempt to turn the world upside down; and I am not surprised at the incredulity expressed by some as to the reality of a conspiracy in our land against the being of God, and our civil, and social, and religious institutions.

I can only say, that in Boston and New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and through New England and the Middle States, such an organization was as open and as well known as that of Christian churches, and no formal proof was needed, at the time these lectures were delivered. Their plans were avowed in their books, and tracts, and newspapers, and inculcated in their temples of reason, discussed in their weekly meetings, and threatened as an achievement which was near, even at the door. It was boasted that in Boston there were six hundred men on their side, ready to pledge their property for the propagation of their principles. And they actually petitioned the legislature for the charter of a college, to be established under their auspices. Of this combination many were young men, whose perversion extended sorrow and alarm through the city, and created for a time that kind of febrile action which precedes contempt of law, and insurrection. About this time the female apostle of atheistic liberty visited the city, and her lectures were thronged, not only by men, but even by females of respectable standing. And the effect of these lectures on such listeners was not the mere gratification of curiosity. She made her converts, and that, too, not