ward degradation which prevents the mind from breaking out beyond the bounds of inanimate nature, and finding or inventing an object immaterial like itself on which its hopes and fears may ultimately rest. Through all the variety of tribes and situations the same involuntary and unpremeditated reverence has appeared from some superior power; and the most obvious argument for the existence of a Deity that occurred to the ancients was the argument from general consent, from the admitted fact that a Deity was everywhere believed.

To this general belief there have no doubt been two classes of apparent exceptions,-the savage who has not yet formed an idea of divinity,-and the sophist who has rejected it. (B.) But the accounts of these savage atheists are given by travellers unacquainted with their language, too much in haste to examine any subject thoroughly, and who mistake the want of a name, or visible object of worship, for ignorance of a Deity. With respect to the atheism of philosophers, their unbellef arises not from the natural bias of the mind, but from a continual effort of the reasoning power, opposing the contradictions of their former creed to the natural tendency of their thoughts and current of their imaginations, so that the mind, kept divided and at war with itself, suspends its natural action.

The prevalence of atheism may be considered as a political presage ;-it is symptomatic of the decay of states as well as of the corruption of individuals, and of the dissolution of society as well as of morals. It broke out in Greece upon the eve of its loss of liberty; it re-appeared at Rome when the republic was in the wane; it revived in later times amid the corruption of Italy and the Papal Church, previous to the Reformation; and in France it accompanied the decline of the monarchy, and was the precursor of the revolution.

In examining the false religious creeds of the world, we

see, that the tendency to believe is strong even when the grounds on which belief rests are weak and irrational. While men act naturally, and follow their bias instinctively, their superstitions have a large sway over them, but when they begin to reason, they cease to believe. It is the mind which has gradually shaped out its own objects of worship, not a previously existing object which has commanded the veneration of the mind, and which, the more it is examined, exerts a deeper sway over its powers. Now, the less that there is of evidence in belief, the more strongly is exhibited the propensity of the mind to believe. The futility and absurdity of the various creeds which have prevailed throughout the earth are the strongest proofs that man was naturally created to fear God, and to have the thoughts of him continually present; and though now he shrinks from the purity of the Deity, still he must fill up the void occasioned by the absence of a true worship, by setting up idols monstrous, shadowy, and vain. The age of atheists and of økoptics, which undermines and destroys old idols, only prepares the way for new ones. Atheism and superstition alternate with each other, but atheism leads back the mind with much more rapidity to superstition than superstition does to atheism.

Thus the mind of man, if left to its own unaided efforts, as we may judge from its past history, would move round in perpetual circles, endeavoring to form one religious system after another, each of them in its turn destroyed by the fatal errors which it included. While atheism came between with its brief interval, like the transient sleep of the self-existent deity of Indian philosophy, during whose fits of slumber, all the gods and worlds are absorbed into the universal essence, only that the overflowing fountain of Deity may, after a pause, pour itself forth anew into all the diversified forms of Maya and delusion. Such is the disordered action of the human mind in its present and fallen

state, severed from that communion with the Deity on which was grounded its vigor and stability, yet enough remains of its original structure, to enable us to conclude that the mind was intended as a mirror to reflect the glory of its Author, and that, to fear God and keep his commandments, is indeed the whole duty of man.

II. As the traveller who wished for some relic of the old Roman greatness was desired to take up a handful of the dust on which he trode, and boldly to affirm that this was a remnant of ancient Rome; so he who gathers up a pebble or a flower, carries in his hand a demonstration of the Divine existence. Every portion of the universe is stamped with the impress of its Maker, but not always in characters equally legible by man. The dawn of design is visible even in the least organized of Nature's produc tions, but rises with ever increasing light through the ascending scale of creation. We find proofs from the simplest state of the elements, and the first rudiments of the world. The air would forever remain dead and stagnant round the globe, were it not for the law of expansion by heat, by which a current ascends from the equator, glides down upon the poles, and returns in cooling breezes to the burning climes of the south. And the earth would be without showers were it not for the law of unequal expansion by heat, according to which, currents of different temperatures are unable to retain their moisture when united, and the warmer air must restore a portion of its humidity to the form of vapour, and afterwards distil it upon the earth in rain. The ocean, though less mobile than the air, imitates it in the course of its currents, and equalizes the temperature of the different zones by the warmth of its great gulf stream, while it receives by the returning waters, the ice of the polar regions. To a law of unequal expansion in the air we owe the production of showers; and to an apparent irregularity of contraction in

the sea, as it cools towards the point of freezing, we owe the fluidity of the lowest ocean in high latitudes. To the minute portion of iron in the primitive rocks, and to the decomposition which it effects by its union with the oxygen of the atmosphere, we are indebted for the earliest soil; and to its being so minute, we are indebted for the fertility of that soil, which would have been altogether sterile had the proportion of iron been large. The marks of design, no less than the traces of organic remains, are found imbedded in the wreck of former worlds, each in succession being adapted to its place in the series; while the whole series are admirably fitted to be the forerunners of this present earth, and of man, its intelligent possessor, surrounded with the animals that minister to his wants, all of which subsist on the spoils of other continents, and the riches of ancient ruins.

Vegetable physiology is still very imperfectly understood, yet in the structure of plants, whether superficially regarded or more accurately examined, numberless instances of Divine skill are discoverable-in the germination, growth, and decay of vegetables,-in the manner in which they are located through the earth and adapted to their different situations,-in the nourishment they afford to the various tribes of animals-and in the various changes and improvements of which they are susceptible when cultivated by the hand of man. Man, in himself, contains an inexhaustible store of proofs of the Divine existence without the aid of anatomy, and merely regarding his outward form. What Divine skill in the position of his varied senses! What a proof of a Deity, as the ancient theists maintained, is even the structure of the human hand! How flexible the human tongue to form the almost inexhaustible sounds of articulate language! And how wonderful is the language of the countenance, which expresses we know not well how, every varying shade of passion!

But the anatomy of the human body, and its interior structure is indeed the strong hold of natural theology, containing proofs of Divine workmanship such as no caviller can gainsay, while it is demonstrative, as soon as intelligible, to every understanding.

And when human anatomy has carried the proofs of Divine existence, as might be supposed, to the very highest pitch, comparative anatomy shows us what almost innumerable additions may be made to the sum of arguments, which, considered in themselves, seemed scarcely to admit of additions. And though this evidence gradually diminishes in strength and variety as it is prolonged down to the inferior animals, what a sudden and unexpected manifestation of Divine skill breaks in upon us like a new revelation, from the study of insects, among whose multitudes of tribes, we meet with forms and structures as varied and unexpected as if they had been the tenants of another planet.

"Wherever I turn my eyes," said Aurenzebe, when conscience-stricken at the point of death, "I see nothing but the Divinity." And so might an observer of nature exclaim, were his eyes opened to discern the every day wonders which are around him. Like Moses beholding the burning bush unconsumed, wherever we go, we might tread with reverence, for our footsteps are upon holy ground. And while this earth is a magazine of evidences for the Divine being, astronomy, which connects this earth with the solar system, and with the host of stars (impressed as they are with the same mighty movement, and obedient to one universal law) spreads these proofs and evidences beyond the limits of our nether world, and diffuses them over the heavens.

Thus to an intelligence capable of understanding it, the world would be a vast system of hieroglyphics, which, to the eye, represented every variety of form and of life, and