ingenuity of sophistry to give any show of absurdity or contradiction to it? If, then, the position that there is such a being is not self-contradictory, his existence is not impossible; that is, it is possible. No man, therefore, can be certain of the non-existence of that which is possible, as that would produce the absurdity of its being possible and impossible at the same time. Every atheist is, therefore, bound to admit, in all fairness, that, after all his scepticism, there may be a God; that, after all his confidence, he may still be mistaken.

Who will venture to say that nothing is in being, except what he perceives and knows? How many wonderful and powerful agencies in nature have modern discoveries brought to light, the existence of which was never imagined by past ages, and which, if announced to them, might only have excited, in many cases, the smile or the contempt of incredulity. With what unbounded surprise, if not utter disbelief, would a philosopher of Greece or Rome have received the announcement that there is a power in nature, distributed through all its various departments, which is more gentle in its usual course than the falling dew, and more terriffic in its occasional operations than the wildest hurricane; by which the heart beats, and the thunder rolls; which can sleep quiescent in a jar, or blaze through the wide canopy of heaven, involving the whole world in one sheet of flame; that without it life could not exist, while it is capable in a moment of rending the solid globe, and shivering to atoms the whole material structure of this world. Our philosopher, in such a case, might have expressed his astonishment or even his doubts, but ought he to have affirmed that no such power could exist, because he had not yet discovered it? And is it not as unphilosophically daring to affirm that there is not, and cannot be, any power as distinct from the electric fluid as that is from mechanical

force, and as superior to it as this mysterious agent is to all human energy; that there may not be, in other words, a power to which no limits can be assigned, which is distinguished by intelligence, to which all other powers act in dependent subordination, and which is distinct from nature only as its author and its source? Have our atheistic philosophers discovered every possible secret of nature, so as to pronounce that she has revealed all she has to disclose? Are they assured that, in no past age, there has been a convincing exhibition of a divine power?-Are they certain that in future ages there never will be? Can they say that, if not within the reach of their own observation, the boundless range of nature supplies, in no part of the universe, such proof? Yet such is the universal knowledge assumed by those who affirm "there is no God!

Whether, then, we can, or cannot prove that there is a God, it is certain that atheism cannot prove that there is no God. Its advocates may deny what we consider certain, but they have nothing on this point to substitute but doubt; whatever promise of truth it may make, it can guide us only to the regions of uncertainty. I beg those who are sometimes staggered by the tone of confidence which infidelity assumes, to remember this. And I intreat those who have said, either in their hearts, or with their lips, "there is no

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* Concessions of extreme uncertainty as to the origin of the universe, and, consequently, as to their favourite position, that it had no Creator, are frequently made by the most determined opposers of the existence of a Deity. Mirabaud, or the author of the System of Nature,' which bears his name, who treats the idea of a Creator as a chimera," a fancy," &c. and, with much ingenious sophistry, endeavours to prove that an all-creating intelligence is a thing impossible and absurd, thus writes: "If it be inquired how or for why matter exists; we answer we know not."-Vol. I. p. 96. "But it will be asked, and not a little triumphantly, from whence did she (nature) receive her motion. Our reply is, we know not, neither do they; that we never shall, that they never will. It is a secret hidden from us, concealed from them by the most impenetrable veil.”— Vol. I. p. 41. "In supposing it (matter) to be created or produced by a being distinguished from it, or less known than itself, which it may be, for anything that we know to the contrary."!-Vol. I. p. 96.

God," considering the acknowledged uncertainty in which all their speculations must still leave the great point in dispute, to attend with the utmost seriousness and concern to the following presumptive arguments, which lie against the atheistic scheme.

First: The general belief, in all ages and in all countries, of the existence of a Deity, is unaccountable on the principles of atheism, and is a presumption that it is not founded in truth. That such has been the general belief, none, I presume, will be found to deny. This was the case with all the ancient nations, with the Indians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans; with the hordes of Northern barbarians which inundated the Roman empire, and which finally amalgamated with the nations of Europe; and with all the tribes of the New World, in the whole extent of the American continent. This belief in a superior power has, indeed, as might be expected by any one acquainted with human nature, been greatly modified by existing circumstances, according to the degree to which civilization prevailed, and the temper and genius of the people. The mythology of the Greeks was full of poetry, that of our Saxon ancestors was fierce and warlike. A refined people gave a polish to their religious system; and barbarous nations attributed to their divinities much of their own grossness. Hence there is but little weight in the objection which is sometimes made, that the gods of these nations were multiplied, were absurd, gross, and vicious. The idea of a divine being having gained possession of the mind, it was by ignorance, passion, fancy, moulded into strange shapes and uncouth forms. A single object, and that the most regular and perfect, may be multiplied, distorted out of all shape, or broken into apparent fragments, and invested with colours which do not properly belong to it, according to the medium through which it is viewed.

This proves nothing against the object; though it is decisive as to the unfavourable nature of the medium for giving just perceptions of it. Such, we conceive, has been the effect of the very different circumstances in which man has been found, on this idea, which, from the earliest ages, and in every part of the world, has taken possession of his mind.

Now, how is this belief of all ages and all countries to be accounted for? We find it in times and places the most remote; in nations which could not, at least for a long succession of ages, have any communication with each other ; as deeply fixed in the minds of the savages of America as in those of the European continent, or of the ancient Orientals. Admit the position that there is a divine Creator, such as the Bible speaks of, and all the phenomena are at once explained. It is scarcely possible to suppose that a wise and beneficent being should have formed such a creature as man, and left him wholly ignorant of his origin. The knowledge of his Maker must have been preserved for some ages after man's creation; but as the human race became depraved, and, in distributing themselves over the face of the earth, degenerated into ignorance and barbarism, or, in their refinement, indulged in the wantonness of speculation and of fancy, the simple and original idea of a supreme being was multiplied and distorted into all the grossness of idolatry, and all the poetic fictions of mythology.

But, on the atheistic hypothesis, how is this to be explained? If it be supposed that the idea was handed down by tradition from father to son, from time immemorial, still the question arises, how did the tradition originate? If it be an idea so chimerical and repugnant to reason as the advocates of this philosophy would have us to believe, how came it to be as early as the annals of man, and as wide as the human race? That such a tradition should arise in a thousand different parts of the globe, and with as many

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different tribes, or, if it be assigned to a common origin, that it should have found universal acceptance, or nearly so, in every succeeding generation, can only be accounted for, I conceive, on the supposition that it is quite in accordance with the nature of man; and the correspondence of this belief with the sense of mankind, in all circumstances and in all ages, affords a strong presumption of its truth.

Or, if recourse is had, in explanation, to something in the constitution of man's nature which leads him to the conception of such an idea-to a kind of moral instinct which prompts him to recognize and worship a superior power— does not this innate propensity accord with the supposition of the existence of a Creator, who, for wise and benevolent purposes, wrought the feeling into the very texture of his nature, rather than with that which supposes it to be a universal fallacy, leading to no good, but producing debasement and misery.*

Or, if the belief be referred to reason, and it be supposed an error of the judgment, is it not a most inexplicable and unparalleled phenomenon, that nearly all men, in all times and places, should, without any common consent, have fallen into a similar error?

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The author of the System of Nature' endeavours to obviate the difficulty we are noticing, not by denying the fact of universal belief, but by assigning it to causes which he supposes compatible with this system. According to him,

*So strong is this innate tendency to acknowledge and worship a superior power, that man has, by some philosophers, been quaintly defined as a "religious animal." And if there really existed no proper object of worship, would not this be a singular exception to all the capabilities and propensities of our nature? For every sense, for every faculty, for every desire or appetite, whether of the mind or body, there is an appropriate object. There are forms and colours for the visual organs, sounds for the ears, food for the cravings of hunger, knowledge to satisfy curiosity, and friends for all our social affections; but, if for this innate propensity, found wherever the human race exists, there were no object,—nothing but a monstrous and injurious fiction, how strange would be such an anomaly, such a solitary exception in man's nature!