To use the words of Gibbon, "they diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers: devoutly in appearance, frequented the temples of the gods, and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an Atheist under the sacerdotal robes." Such, among the philosophers, were the dictates of the voice of nature respecting the Deity, and the conduct to which it led.

If from the philosophers we turn to the people, we shall see the prevalence of the grossest polytheism and idolatry. According to the vulgar estimation, there were deities that presided over every distinct nation, every distinct city, every inconsiderable town, every grove, every river, every fountain. There were the gods who governed above the moon, the demons whose jurisdiction was in the air, the heroes, or souls of dead men, who presided over terrestrial affairs. Temples were erected to all the passions, diseases, fears, and evils, to which mankind are subject. Passions that would disgrace humanity, were ascribed to their gods, and suited to their various characters were the rites of their worship. These rites were absurd, licentious, and cruel, and often consisted of mere unmixed crime, shameless dissipation and debauchery. Besides the numbers of men who were killed in the bloody sports and spectacles instituted in honour of their deities, human sacrifices were offered to propitiate them. Boys were whipped on the altar of Diana, sometimes till they died, and thousands of lovely infants did the Carthagenians sacrifice to their implacable god, Moloch.

I have room to notice the opinions of the ancients, on another speculative point only a future state of existence. The great majority had barely a traditionary hope of an hereafter, and the opinions of the rest amount to little more than a desire and a wish that were unevidenced. At one time, we find the virtuous Socrates saying, "I am in good hope, that there is something remaining for those who are dead, and that it will be much better for good than for bad men;" but, afterwards, this hope seems almost to have vanished, and at the very moment, too, when it was most needed. "I am leaving this world," said he, when on the point of death, "and you are to continue in it, but which of us has the better part, is a secret to every one but God." Cicero is justly ranked among the most eminent of those who have argued upon

this subject, and he, too, laboured under the same uncertainty. After he has reasoned long on the subject, and brought forward a variety of arguments, both for and against the immortality of the soul, he says, "Which of these is true, God only knows; and which is most probable, a very great question." All which gave Seneca just occasion to say, that "immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by these great men. Julius Cæsar went so far as to deny a futurity altogether, and that before the assembled senate of the mistress of the world. "Death," he says, on the trial of the Cataline conspirators, "death puts an end to all the evils of mortals, beyond it there is neither joy nor sorrow." Such was the disbelief and the uncertainty that prevailed respecting a futurity. This state of things frequently gave rise, especially in the minds of good men, to distressing doubts and apprehensions; and they both felt and expressed, what must be the dictate of every unperverted bosom so circumstanced, a strong desire that the Deity would reveal himself, and dissipate the gloom and the uncertainty. Such a feeling was honourable to their characters, and proves the point for which we are contending the necessity and value of a revelation.

The practical evils that ensued from ignorance on these and other important topics, were great and extensive. Some of them I have already mentioned. There existed, I grant, and that most gladly, from time to time, great and good men; but the character of society at large, was bad indeed. Crimes which now we should blush to name, were openly practised and sanctioned and regulated by law, and celebrated in poetry. The condition of social intercourse and of domestic society, presented little that was pleasing to the pure in heart. The interior acts of the soul, the adultery of the eye, and the murder of the heart, were little regarded. Pride and love of popular applause, were recognised as the ruling principles of action. The infamous traffic in human blood, was allowed and carried on to its utmost extent, and on certain occasions, the owners had permission to kill their slaves. Theft was permitted in Egypt, and encouraged in Sparta, provided only it were done with skill. The exposure of infants, and the destruction of children who were maimed or imperfect, was allowed at Sparta; and at Athens, the great seat and nursery of philosophers, it was enacted,

that infants which appeared to be maimed, should either be killed or exposed. But I must arrest myself, though it would, alas! be too easy to extend the catalogue of crimes which were deemed indifferent, if not virtuous and lawful. After this, can any one assert, that more knowledge and greater inducements to virtue, were not necessary to these nations; and if the Greeks and Romans needed a revelation, who may be able to presume that they can forego its benefits?

I might, did these pages allow, inquire among pagan nations of modern times, what the light of nature had taught them respecting God and Deity, and what is the conduct to which it has led. I might advert to China, and its superstitions and immoralities-to Hindostan, and its three hundred and thirty million of deities, rites the most impure, penances the most toilsome, the burning of widows, infanticide, the immersion of the sick and dying in the Ganges, and the self-devotement of thousands to destruction, under the chariot-wheels of the idol Juggernaut,—to these, and many other pagan nations, I might advert, and ask whether or not they need more knowledge and a better creed, and whether the Christian revelation would be a benefit or an injury to those children of reason, and scholars in the school of nature; but it is enough to have alluded to the fact, and your own information and reflection will supply what I leave unsaid.

We come then to modern unbelievers, and here too we must study brevity. That many of these also have been Atheists, cannot be denied; and if we are to believe the testimony of Brittan, himself an unbeliever, there is an easy gradation from Deism to Atheism. "Deism, he says, is but the first step of reason out of superstition. No person remains a Deist, but through want of reflection, timidity, passion, or obstinacy." Others, among whom was Mr. Paine, believed in the existence of an intelligent Creator. Yet except thereto be added, the belief of a future state of being, the efficacy of such an opinion is small indeed. Now, it is a well known fact, that most unbelievers altogether abandon the idea of a futurity; and none, of whose writings I am acquainted, pretend to have a confidence upon the topic. The language of Mr. Paine on this subject, is stronger than that in which most unbelievers would acquiesce; yet with him a future state of existence was the barest probability, and he distinctly

says, in his private thoughts on a future state, "whether the Deity will or will not continue us in existence, it is not in our power to decide." Weak as this is, unsatisfactory as it must prove in the hour of death, and unevidenced as it was by any thing that could afford it corroboration, still it is more than most unbelievers would say; and even the assertion of Hobbes, at the point of death, "I am about to take a leap in the dark," most, I am persuaded, would consider as not sufficiently posi tive, for they would deny and abjure any other state of future being than such as ensues from the changes of matter, by which what is now a man, may hereafter become an oak or an elephant.

Such is the information on these all-important topics, which modern unbelievers deduce from the light of nature. In regard to practical morality too, are the opinions which they pretend to derive from nature worthy of approbation? Lord Herbert declared, that "men are not hastily or on small grounds to be condemned, who are led to sin by bodily constitution; that the indulgence of lust and anger is no more to be blamed, than the thirst occasioned by the dropsy, or the drowsiness produced by lethargy." Mr. Hobbes asserted, that "the civil or municipal law, is the only foundation of right and wrong; that where there is no civil law, every man's judgment is the only standard of virtue and vice; that the sovereign is not bound by any obligation, and can do no wrong to his subjects; that every man has a right to all things, and may lawfully get them if he can." Lord Bolingbroke taught, that "ambition, the lust of power, sensuality, and avarice, may be lawfully gratified, if they can be safely gratified; and that the chief end of man is to gratify the appetites and inclinations of the body." Mr. Hume maintained, that " pride and self-valuation are virtues; that adultery must be practised, if men would obtain all the advantages of life, and that if generally practised, it would in time cease to be scandalous." But enough of the lessons of nature, as conveyed through these children of reason. Nor shall I inquire what influence their principles exerted upon their conduct, except in one or two cases. It is well known that unbelievers, in order to subvert Christianity, have (and still do) pretended to be among its friends; they have worn the garb of affection, in order, more certainly, to stab it to the vital parts.

Lord Herbert, Hobbes, Lord Bolingbroke, Woolston, Tindal, and Chubb, were all guilty of this vile hypocrisy, while they were employed in no other design than to destroy it. Such faithless professions, such gross violations of truth, would have been proclaimed to the universe by these very writers, as infamous desertions of principle and decency. Is it less infamous in themselves? All hypocrisy is detestable, but none is so detestable as that which is coolly written with full premeditation, by a man of talents, assuming the character of a reformer and a moral guide. I would hold no compromise with any pious fraud; but least of all is the fraud pardonable, which proceeds, not from a weak and a mistaken mind, deceived as to the means of conferring a benefit on mankind, but from a calm and deliberate design to deprive thousands of their support and solace, without having the means of substituting any equivalent in their place.

If from individuals we turn to public bodies, the only instance in which the avowed rejectors of a Revelation have possessed the supreme power of a country, and have attempted to dispose of human happiness according to their own doctrines and wishes, is that of France during a part of her first Revolution. The great majority of the nation had become unbelievers. The name and profession of Christianity were renounced by the legislature. Death was declared to be an eternal sleep. Public worship was abolished. The churches were converted into temples of reason, and a ludicrous imitation of the Pagan theology was exhibited. And what followed? Soon all distinctions of right and wrong were confounded. Proscription followed upon proscription, tragedy followed after tragedy, in almost breathless succession. The moral and social ties were loosened or rather torn asunder. For a man to accuse his own father, was declared to be an act of civism worthy of a true republican, and to neglect it was pronounced a crime that should be punished with death. Accordingly, women denounced their husbands, and mothers their sons, as bad citizens and traitors. Women were seen, with savage ferocity, to seize between their teeth the mangled limbs of their countrymen. France during this period was a theatre of crimes, which have changed all the histories of preceding sufferings into idle tales. To contemplative men, it seemed as if the knell of a whole nation were tolled, and the world summoned