IV. soon as they are fitly taught." If it be left desti- LETTER tute of the instruction, it will grow up without it; in this respect it must then be like the animals in the field, or by its fireside, as ignorant of the Divine Author as of its future destiny. From the want of this tuition, the greatest blessing which one being can confer upon another, how many, even in our days, have minds on this point no farther advanced than the most stupid savage of Australia, or the fetish-governed negro; and if the absence were to become national, and to remain so, new insanities of Paganism would soon appear, and the human mind. be either demonized or stultified, and again enslaved by depraved and infelicitating superstitions. Recent experience justifies this conclusion.10 9 It was for this reason that the Jewish legislator so earnestly inculcated, "Hear! O Israel! The Lord thy God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul. These words shall be in thy heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house; and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.' Deut. c. vi. v. 5–7; again, c. xi. v. 19. 10 An instance of this occurred at Paris in November 1793. On the 7th, the Bishop of Paris and his Grand Vicars went in form with red caps to the National Convention, and renounced their priesthood and christianity; three other Bishops, several Catholic clergy, and two Protestant ministers did the same, which many others soon imitated. Three days afterwards, the constituted authorities of Paris proclaimed a festival to the Goddess of Reason and Truth; and a young woman, arrayed as such, and seated in a chair, ornamented with festoons of leaves, was brought in procession to the Convention, and seated opposite the President; she received their acclamations, and then, placing herself by his side, he welcomed her with the fraternal embrace, while a chorus of youths sang the hymn to Reason, which had been composed for the occasion. The Convention was invited to assist at the feast of Reason in her own temple, and went accordingly to it. This was a temporary building raised in the Cathedral of Paris, with an altar, before which the female sat as goddess, with a large torch F 2 LETTER IV. It is indeed a remarkable truth, that the soul cannot rest satisfied without believing in something supernatural. Hence many of those who deny a Deity, have betrayed impressions of this sort this fact shews, how much the human spirit is formed to receive and cherish the Divine sensibilities; but still it must be taught to combine with these the right conceptions, or it will not possess them."1 For these reasons it is obvious, that the first Theism of every new generation, would depend on the instructions it individually received from those among whom it came; and wherever the due knowlege was not effectually inculcated, folly and falsehood would torch blazing over her, as the Torch of Truth. Public homage was paid her by the crowded populace. Public Journals of Nov. 1793, and Moniteur. Robespierre, who censured this as atheistical, yet being equally adverse to Christianity, in the following June had what he called a fête to the Supreme Being, in which he acted as high priest. His plan was also to make the Virtues objects of veneration, by having festival days appointed for them; these, if he had lived, would have brought back the Roman 'fides, pudicitia, concordia, spes et clementia,' as subjects of public worship, which Pliny mentions, sneering at such divinities. Nat. Hist. 1. ii. c. 5. "In Thiebault's Original Anecdotes of Frederick II., among those who frequented this King's palace, it is mentioned that La Metherie, the apostle of universal materialism, makes the sign of a cross when it thunders. Maupertuis, who does not believe in God, yet says his prayers every evening on his knees. D'Argens, a still firmer infidel, shudders if he counts thirteen persons sitting round a table. The Princess Amelia, the king's favorite sister, almost as much a philosopher and endowed with an intellect almost as strong as his own, is the dupe of fortune-tellers. Half of Frederic's court believe the story that a woman in white appears in the palace sweeping one of its rooms, when some one of the royal family is to die that year.' Mr. Leigh Hunt mentions of Lord Byron, that he believed in the ill luck of Fridays, and was seriously disconcerted if any thing was to be done on that frightful day of the week. The idea of a supernatural fate over-ruling men appears in the writings of many German unbelievers; and the savage nations who have no notion of a Deity, yet believe in witchcraft, charms, and obys. A large list might be made of the superstitions of the anti-religionists, in all ages and countries. IV. prevail instead. As the right education declined, LETTER and the inventions of Paganism arose, these became the adopted tenets of the neglected spirit; and thus a hopeless Atheism would have now been the universal governor of the human mind, if the Jewish and Christian revelations had not rescued human nature from such deterioration and unhappiness.12 The belief in the creation of the world by an intelligent Maker, has been chiefly upheld by these venerated documents; and altho the belief has now become so naturalized in human nature, and associated with so much of our science and literature, that our knowlege and libraries must be extinguished before it can again be obliterated, yet the generality of the impression, and the heart's attachment to it, will always most abound where the sacred writings are most diffused and studied. Philosophy does not adequately feel, how much of all that is most valued by the enlightened, the 12 The influence of these is interestingly shewn in the address of the Creek Indians to the President of the United States, on the intended unjust removal of the remains of their nation out of Georgia, 'the land of their fathers.' Unless the missionaries had been among them, they could not have used language like this in 1825, tho they might have had some less definite feelings of the same sort: We, the sons of the forest, have agreed to address you in the language of the living. Who placed in our delicious climate those lofty mountains, and planted the stately forests, which shelter our babes and our game? Who sends His rain and sunshine to fertilize our lands? Who distributes the flowing rivers that lead us to the sea of the mighty waters? The ETERNAL and BENIGN SPIRIT, that walks on the face of the deep. He has placed us here. He gave us these lands as our inheritance; and that we might not be disturbed, he placed the whites in Europe. Offend Him not; for, when it is His pleasure, His mighty power shakes the mountains, as the wind shakes a leaf. His lightning blasts the stately forest. His thunder and His storms show the dreadful power of the Great Spirit.' British Press, 28th July 1825. IV. LETTER benevolent and the upright, arise from these sources, and would disappear if they could be banished, and is always wanting where they do not efficaciously influence.13 The Creation of the World is the fundamental truth from which all Sacred History proceeds, and the absence of it in the mind leaves a chasm which what is pernicious will ever occupy, as it did heretofore. But this, when fixed as a principle within us, will lead us to consider all material nature as performing the motions and existing in the arrangements which, He who created, has designed and planned that in every part should take place. It moves in and to these, not by its own power, from any self-motivity; but solely as the agencies and forces which, in execution of the plan He directs upon it, cause and impel and guide it to. None of the motive forces in our system act from themselves, any more than the masses and substances which they influence. Matter has no mind, or 13 The contrarieties of the human mind when it abandons its better Instructor are remarkable. Thus, as to the future existence of the soul:-In November 1793, the Directory of the Department of Haute Marne ordered, that at the entrance of every burial-ground there should be a stone with the inscription, 'Here is the abode of Peace and ETERNAL SLEEP.' Morn. Chron. 2d Dec. 1793. This was highly applauded and imitated at Paris; yet, six months afterwards, the day before he fell, ROBESPIERRE exclaimed, 'No! Chaumette! no. Death is not an eternal sleep. Citizens! obliterate from the tombs that maxim engraved by sacrilegious hands, which throws a funereal crape over nature; which discourages oppressed innocence, and insults death. Inscribe there rather, 'Death is the BEGINNING of IMMORTALITY.' Robesp. Speech on 26th July, 1794. Levasseur's Hist. vol. iii. p. 334. It was one of this same man's strong remarks in the Convention, "He who defends atheism, gives absolution to superstition.' Report, 5th Feb. 1794. Six days before this he had said, 'The fanatic covered with scapularies, and the fanatic who preaches up atheism, very much resemble each other.' IV. thought, or will, or choice, or spontaneous motivity. LETTER It moves when moved, and continues in motion as long as the moving force is actuating it, and never moves but in the ratio and direction which that imparts, or which the combination or counteraction of the powers that affect it occasion, if more than one be operating upon it. All moving forces have their assigned laws and properties attached to them by their Creator. They have been specifically appointed by Him to do what they have done and are still effectuating. They are mere instrumentalities at His command. They know nothing of the results they cause, nor mean to perform any of them, nor could of themselves co-operate with each other, nor produce any systematical arrangement, or regulated or orderly effects. It is their Master and Maker who organizes, governs and guides them to those movements and operations which they perform, and from all others; so that by His directing will they are made to do what we see them effect, and that only, because He restrains and averts them from all else. He limits, withholds and suspends, as well as urges and enables. is His sacred gratification to do so. His creations are obviously his delight. Their multiplicity is evidence of the pleasure He has taken in making them, for He would not have framed them if their formation had been irksome to Him. Their conservation is equally an evidence that He continues to be gratified by them; and we may believe, that if there can be a difference, it must be more pleasurable to a being of His benevolence to preserve and superintend than even to create. We therefore need not have the paltry idea of the ancients, that It |