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I deem it next, of much moment, if you would deistically evangelise the world, that you should find some method of organising yourselves into social unities! this is absolutely necessary if you would accomplish any object in common, or, in such a chilly climate as yours, keep your sympathies for one another from freezing. The world, at present, does not believe in your capacity to fasten on social human nature, or to give effect to your hopes of diffusing the blessings of a "rational piety." Deism is looked on as a negative, not a positive thing,-an explosive and destructive, not a centripetal or an organising force. It is precisely here that in all its forms it has hitherto so ignominiously failed; nevertheless till its advocates cease to live in such dreary isolation, as scattered units, -till it can bind together its human atoms, and give them compact shape and coherence, - till it can breathe into men a spark of enthusiasm, and inflame and intensify emotion by inspiring a common sympathy in common objects, it will never be a thing of influence at all; how much less an instrument of regenerating the world!

A few trifling and partial achievements, here and there, of the destructive kind, -the cutting off now and then a straggler who has strayed from the camp of "historical religions"—that is all it must expect to accomplish, till it relieves itself from the old and just reproach of being incapable of inspiring common sympathies and prompting to united action.

How happy the change if you succeed in organising your deistical friends! Soon shall we see numerous "Churches," "I beg pardon, "Temples" I mean, rising in our land; crowded to hear the new and true ɛvayyéλior, by which the old-fashioned Gospel is to be supplanted and eclipsed! No doubt they will be

in a plain yet majestic style of architecture,-befitting the mingled grandeur and simplicity of the new institute; adorned with every thing in their structure and style which can minister to an austere beauty. As to the funds,- who can hesitate to believe they will be easily supplied by that lavish benevolence which a system so pure and glorious cannot fail to excite?

It were a scandal to doubt it. If even the poorest and meanest superstition of the ancient or the modern world; if Christianity, in its most corrupt forms as well as in its purest, can induce their votaries, according to their means, and "beyond them," to cover the world with the structures and the apparatus of religious worship, what may we not hope from that more perfect theory of religion with which you and your compeers are about to bless the nations? A beginning should, I think, be made without delay. Let some edifice, capable of holding at least three or four score (that, for a time, may be quite enough), be built as a model "fane" of your true deistical worship.

I am perfectly aware, of course, of the arguments by which such an attempt at organisation may be met. But I cannot admit that, if the great achievements you hope for are ever to be realised, those objections are to be listened to. You must move, if you would be successful; and remember for your encouragement, that scarcely more than a hundred Christians met in a certain “ upper room" at Jerusalem some 1800 years ago!

It may be said (and I concede the force of the argument) that it is impossible to make a formidable organisation out of a few score of people, appearing, sporadically, in the course of a century or so. I cannot deny the mournful truth of the statement; but since you must make a beginning, you must not lay any stress on this fact. You must use the elements you have, such as they are, -many or few. The tardy growth, or rather stunted no growth of Deism, the paucity of the proselytes it has been capable of making during three centuries, tempts Christians to taunt it as a thing of naught. Ought you not to infer, with your views of its self-recommending excellence, that its want of success springs from the absence of that positive effort and positive machinery,

for the necessity of which I plead? If you doubt, that when exhibited and enforced as it ought to be, it would commend itself to the human heart,-slowly, perhaps, but surely, you not only give sorry proof of your faith in the doctrine of "Progress," but will even lead people to suspect that your truth is not so congruous" to the human soul after all; and that the doleful representations of Christians as to the "depravity of human nature," are too well founded.

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Many other suggestions I could offer, but I will content myself with one more. Could you not manage, then, to get up, among your Deistical friends, a little missionary "steam," and make a trip or two to the heathen? It does seem strange to all Christendom that the infinite forms of error and pollution, in which the nations are wallowing, should always have been viewed by your Deistical friends with such profound apathy; that not the slightest effort should have been made on your part to diffuse among miserable Polytheists the only pure system; that you should have had no sacred ambition to become reformers and benefactors of the world! If it be said, "We have enough to do to convert Christians"—that is true; more than enough, I should say; but then, you perceive, Christians won't be converted; and so, having preached the truth to these obstinate folks, faithfully, but without effect, you, like the Apostle Paul in relation to the Jews, are absolved from further effort, and should "turn to the Gentiles." Why should they be deprived of the benefit of the

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universal religion you have to preach, because these Jew-like Christians will not hear it? If it be said, though I fancy you will not say, "The heathen are very well, — Hindoos and Caffres, with their idols and absurdities, let them alone,”- the same argument surely will do for Christians; let them alone; if a Polynesian is well off with his gross superstitions, surely a Christian must be better off, at least as well. Why so anxious to subvert Christianity? On this account, therefore, as well as for the other reasons I have mentioned, leave it alone.

If you say, "Why, the fact is, the mission of Deism is simply destructive; burning down, not building houses, is our vocation - and that is easiest done in the next street ;-why should we go to other lands when we can fling our torches into our neighbours' doors and windows?"-this, if true, is surrendering the whole question. It is confirming the world in its impression that your system was never destined to be a "power" in the world; while, as I have shown you in previous letters, even your destructive efforts somehow do not succeed; the incendiary match is always going out the Deistical gunpowder is always damp.

Can it be imagined that you will have much difficulty in obtaining funds for a moderate Missionary experiment, considering the importance of the object? Many, I know, are disposed to think it. Prove them in the wrong. It is true one sometimes hears the philanthropic Deist making light of any such vulgar modes of manifesting spiritual activity. "That activity is not to be measured," it is sublimely said, "by any such base estimate. Let the vulgar lay stress on Bible and Missionary societies, and the other coarse machinery of an ordinary Christian philanthropy, if they will, and parade in Reports, and Platform rhodomontade, the money which they have wheedled out of the pockets of the people; but a pure lover of 'spiritual truth' will appraise at the true value such odious modes of promoting its diffusion." This is all very fine, but it will not avail you; odious as may be the machinery of Christian zeal. vile as may be the talk about "money," and the appeals for it,—still, as long as it is true that the things in question cannot be done without money (as nothing

indeed can be done without cost, and the said money is but a part of it), money must be had, and you must be content to remain insignificant if you cannot obtain it.

In the next place, "vulgar" as money may be, it is, and is generally taken to be, a tolerably just index of the sincerity and strong convictions of those who give it: of the sacrifices they are willing to make for any object, if they cannot make them in the form of personal effort. Men are generally supposed (I imagine not erroneously) to love their money as well as most things; their hankering for that which represents the value of all things besides, is at least as strong as that for any of the things it represents. And so, when it is freely given, men will continue to think that the love of that for which it is given is very sincere, and the sense of its value very strong; and when it is not given, or given grudgingly, men will take it as a proof- a very vulgar one, it may be, but still a proof that those who thus grudge it do not care about the things they profess to admire and love, and are not solicitous that they should be victorious in the world.

Now, if Christians can under the prompting of their low system -low as compared with yours-voluntarily expend, year by year, so much of their gains on the propagation of the Gospel to the uttermost ends of the earth, it can be no difficult thing for you, and those who think with you, to subscribe a few thousands at least for the commencement of a similar hopeful experiment. Surely the system in which are so deeply involved the fortunes of humanity is worth thus much! If not, it must be accounted one of those machines which are admirable in model, but which will not work.

And here I would humbly suggest, that a method might perhaps be devised of bringing into the enterprise a number of those who do not quite agree, or are even very far from agreeing, with you. You know Christians are often praised for uniting in a common cause by merging their minor differences; (would to God they did it more frequently!) now how easily could many of your friends do the like; some of whom deem all the differences of all the religions of the world minor differences, and hold that the "abso

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