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mittee reported, that the Government of the United States was not a religious but a civil Government-that it would be an infringement upon the rights of the community to suppress the Sunday mail; and that while it acknowledges one sect of religionists, it tolerates another sect, viz. the Jews, who enjoyed equal rights with any other denomination."-Dublin Evening Post.

The mission of Miss Frances Wright is one of the few exhilarating occurrences, that cheers and enlivens the rugged path of the truly philosophic mind, amidst the surrounding clouds of religious bigotry, and the mania of sectarianism. The manly, independent, and unfettered decision of the United States' Congress, speaks volumes in proof of that noble maxim, that the state has nothing more to do with religion than to protect every sect in their just rights as citizens; and as a great emperor said, "That the empire of the law ends, where the empire of the conscience begins; neither the law nor the prince must infringe on this empire." In nothing is the ignorant bigotry of the Christian more amply exemplified than in seeking the arm of the law to protect his sabbath. The meaning is evident. It is thus, "Give us every seventh day to plead for our system, and prohibit the people from attending to other things, and we may then engross their attention and enslave their minds."

The fact is, they have no other foundation for their sabbath. We may defy them to prove a single command in their whole book of inspiration, as an authority for keeping their sabbath. The Jews alone have the law of keeping the sabbath in the Bible. The direction of the Master, whom the Christian pretends to follow, is directly opposed to their mode of keeping the sabbath," When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, they love to pray standing in the synagogues. But when thou prayest, enter into thy closet," &c. The Christians follow their Master's direction when it suits their convenience; were they to follow it in the latter case, the trade of public preaching and praying would be ended.

The Select Committee of Congress very wisely determined, that the granting any exclusi rivileges in keeping the Christian sabbath, would be opposed to the Jewish sabbath, and it would be hostile to the Sabbatarian and Freethinking Christians; as also to thousands, who know that it is "lawful to do good on the sabbath-day," and what is wrong on one day, is wrong on any day. It is impossible for the government of any country to grant exclusive privileges to the mania of religious sectarianism, without infringing on the rights of the community. Bristol, June 6, 1829.

E. K. D.

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Delivered before the Society of Universal Benevolence, in their Chapel, Founders' Hall, London,

On Sunday, Nov. 19, 1826,

On Truth.-PART II.

By the Rev. ROBERT TAYLOR, A. B. Orator of the Society.

MEN AND BRETHREN-Your good remembrance, (yours I mean, whose regular attention has observed the method of these Discourses, and seen the entire system of morals, established upon the basis of mathematical demonstration;) will call to mind, that our last stage brought us to the consideration of the nature of truth:-which grand mathematical principle, (for it is a mathematical principle, and nothing else,) comprehends and determines all the proprieties and fitnesses of moral conduct, appertaining to our powers of communication.

Within the limits of that Discourse, it was competent to enter upon so extensive a subject, and to carry your convictions, (as we seemed to do) to the correction of the many erroneous conceits, and to the exposure of the incalculable ignorance of mankind, upon this subject, especially of the religious part of mankind, who always were and always will be, the most ignorant ;-and who, by the necessity of their religion, whatever it be, are cut off from the possibility of attaining to this perfection, as necessarily as the blind are cut off from skill in colours, the dumb, from eloquence, and the deaf, from music.

The faculty which has never been developed by exercise, at last perishes altogether from the mind in which it had been originally implanted. And the faculty of perceiving truth, which, as it is that which distinguishes our nature and raises us above the level of the brute creation, so it is of more delicate and exquisite fabric, and held by too frail a tenure, to endure the boisterous counter-action of any overbearing impressions, and must necessarily, by degrees, yield, melt, decline, and resolve it away-before the withering winter and the blasting fog of cloud-invested faith!

So that of millions of religious fanatics, it would be no paradox to predicate, that they could not tell the truth, if they were to try at it. The faculty itself is quite gone from them.

Philosophy, is grieved, but not irritated at the contemplation of this fatal issue of human imbecility: and only raises. her hope and her exertion in more strenuous effort, to counteract in time, the tendency to this fatal lethargy of the mind: by calling upon

all who have hitherto escaped its influence, or who are still but young in the Circean cup, to bestir themselves in time, and shake the freezing sluggishness from the mind. Awake! awake! have all your wits about you! summon them to the gates that let in knowledge. Be clever men, 'tis the first, the last, the all comprehensive injunction of moral righteousness.-Be clever men; or say your prayers, and go to bed for ever.

Under this summons, I feel that you are at home now in the competent recollection that, we have demonstrated to you, that truth is in words, sentiments, and speculations, what justice is in actions; that its presidency is over all the means and powers of human communication; that it is, in relation to our faculty of communicating what we know, what science is in relation to the faculty of acquiring knowledge, the perfection and excellence of all that is harmonious, beautiful, and pleasurable. Without

science, we could have no perception to ourselves of the knowledge we had attained, and the furniture of the mind would be thrown together in wild disorder, and derangement: and without the corresponding faculty, (which is that of truth) to bring forth the knowledge we have attained, our science would be useless and unprofitable.

"As lamps that burn

To light the dead, or warm th’ ́unfruitful urn.”

"Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter"-Thy knowledge would be nothing, (said the ancients) unless thou can'st cause another to know, what thou knowest.

To do this with accuracy and precision is the art of truth, To have a strong desire to do it, is the morality of truth. Not to be able to produce the impression on the mind of another, which we wish to produce, when the fault is on our side, is ignorance. To produce an impression which we ought not to have produced, in the place of the impression which we ought to have produced, is vice Nature is abhorent to it-The faculty which she hath given to us is perverted from its intended use and end, whenever we do so. This definition will enable us clearly to determine the proprieties or improprieties of communication, and prevent our falling into the egregious blunder, of attributing vice, to the producing of an erroneous impression merely; or truth, to the statement itself, separately from the impression intended to be produced.

It will be evident, that in innumerable cases, the impression of mind which we ought to produce upon the person to whom we communicate, may be such as will and must deceive him. For truth, is reason appearing in words: as justice, is reason exhibited in actions. And as we say, " Summun jus, summa injuria"-An extreme degree of justice would be the highest degree of injustice: and there could be no justice, where there was no reason.

So there could be no truth, where there was no reason. And reason, resulting only from the mind's perception of a comparison and relation of things to each other; it follows, that truth is not made up of a machinery of words, nor to be measured by their absolute correctness or incorrectness. Nor is it in any proposition, abstractly, that the truth, is so that any man might have a right to say, "this is truth to my mind, and therefore it shall be truth to yours." It is in the mind's perception itself, and like the value of money, exists just in the moment of con

veyance.

Man possesses this faculty of truth; it is the highest excellence of his rational nature; and his richest preception of dignity and happiness, is in the exercise of it.

I come now therefore, to the consideration of the mural obligations which our occupation of this inestimable talent, binds upon us. These are, 1st. Our high esteem. 2nd. Our diligent improvement. And 3rd. Our consistent exercise of it.

1st-The obligation of entertaining ever an high esteem of the value and importance of this faculty of communicating and receiv ing knowledge, is determined by the same fitness and propriety of sentiment which determines our self-love, and makes us dear to ourselves. It is involved in the possession of the faculty itself, which, not to perceive, would be, not to possess: and the absence of which, would be as unnatural and monstrous as an error, in an arithmetical calculation.

"But heaven doth with us, as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves, but for their use;

Nor Nature never lends the smallest portion of her excellence,
But like a thrifty goddess, she determines

Herself the glory of a creditor, both thanks and use."

They who have this faculty, will love this faculty, and they who have it most, will prize it best. The principle and motive which will always sufficiently influence a wise and good man, to be veracious and faithful in his communications, to let his yea, be yea, and his nay, nay, in all cases where the terms of the covenant are, that they should be so; are a principle and motive, of which all religious persons are not only necessarily destitute, but to which religion itself, in every form of it that hath ever existed, is necessarily and diametrically opposed.

The practice of truth, is, to the moral man, insured in the love of truth, in his perception of its excellence and beauty, his mind's delight in it, and his heart's only possible satisfaction in the perception of it. And his want of perception of it, is attended with a feeling of a physical rather than of moral defect, as if his hand had failed to retain its grasp on what it held, or his stumbling foot had slipt from the intended place of its position. On the contrary, the religionist supposes himself to discharge the paramount duty of his faith, in resigning his mind to indistinct impres

sions, in ascribing certainty to uncertainty, distinctness to indistinctness, and making himself very sure, where he is very sure that he has no reason to be sure of any thing. The man of faith, "seeth the things which are invisible:" and very fine things, I dare say, he takes 'em to be. The man of truth, seeth nothing, but what there is to be seen, and takes it just as he finds it.

The eternal contrariety therefore, and everlasting opposition of religion and morality, to each other, can never be too strongly insisted on, nor too steadily maintained before the mind's observance. In every respect they are at variance with each otherbut in none so entirely as in the article of the moral virtue of truth.

The love of truth, is fatal to religion. Because it will always make a man as unwilling to impose upon himself, as to impose upon another. Nay more so; because, when he has imposed upon another, the fault, how great soever, may be still amended; but he who has once surrendered his own mind to what is, or what may be, a delusion; can recover himself no more, cannot repair the mischief he hath done, but, like the pest-infected robe, spreads contagion and death, in the innocence of his stupidity. For ye will observe, that the first place of truth, in the great commerce of human communication, is necessarily in the bill of invoice and if not there-'tis out of the question for ever.

Such as the chattels are which the mind takes in-such it will send out again. To expect a man to be very particular, in not uttering falshoods, who makes no scruple of believing them is like asking for a commodity at a shop, where you know that they don't deal in it.

If our love of truth be, as it ought to be, right, hearty, and sincere, we shall love it in all persons, but most of all in ourselves. Our indignation and contempt of all the mean and pitifu arts of chicane and sophistry, will be tempered with a philosophical compassion for the imbecility of nature-and regret for the really to be pitied, and greatly to be lamented degradation of the sophisticating quibbler and shallow-minded falsifier. Alas! they know not what they lose, nor calculate at how dear a price they purchase their poor triumphs. The conscious sophisticator sinks in his own esteem, and feels his dribbling littleness of soul, hang on him beyond the power of cosmetics, to wash-off, or of varnishes, to grace.

The ready and easy believer, as being the worst of falsifiers, the most grievous offender against nature, in the capital crime of palming a lie upon himself, and being willing to be decieved, or what is the same thing, not being willing to be undeceived, when he is decieved; is punished by nature; in having so much of his nature taken from him: he loses the capacity at last of discerning the truth; and would'nt see it-tho' it stood before him, as big as huge Olympus. Ye cannot indeed, convince such an one of his

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