It may be asked of what importance is it from whence this knowledge is derived, if the principles are believed?-much every way! The continuance of religious and moral knowledge depends on a constant reference to its source; if we turn from the source of light we turn into darkness, and time but increases its density. When a system of religion is built upon erroneous inferences--such inferences, though not morally bad in themselves, become fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were so. Error may be infinitely varied, in kind and degree; but if it exist in the premises, the conclusions cannot but be widely distant from truth, and the consequences will be as serious as the subject is important. We pass then to the inquiry into the source of religious and moral knowledge. Is it derived from revelation, or taught by the light of nature, without the aid of revelation?

What is man by nature? And lest we should be supposed to represent him as degraded, weak, and dependent, for the purposes of our argument, we will take the words of an opponent of revelation-not solely because they suit the intent of our argument-but because we think they truly represent the situation of man in a state of nature. "Man, (says Volney) in a

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savage state, is a brute; an ignorant animal; a mischevious "and ferocious beast, like a bear, or an ourang outang; he is "not happy in such a state, for he has but the sensations "of the moment, and these sensations are habitually senti"ments of violent and pressing wants, which he cannot gratify; seeing that he is ignorant by nature, and feeble by his state of insulation from society." This, we say, is substantially a correct view of man in a state of nature, and justly exhibits his intellectual and physical wants. It is evident that the course of nature, by which the physical man is now nurtured into being, must have been departed from in the instance of the first man. The constitution of nature bespeaks a wise and benevolent author; and that adaptation of the passions and affections, to which we owe. our support in infancy-our nurture into maturity, must have been supplied by other benevolent means to our first. parents. Surely the intellectual wants of the being were as pressing and as important as the physical necessities of the animal. God had endowed man with powers superior to those of all other sensitive beings; and as his intellectual is superior to his physical powers, the inference in favour of a moral revelation is as strong as the necessity for a physical superintendence is obvious. It may be urged that the

physical wants being supplied, man would ultimately have arrived at a knowledge of his Creator, and have worshipped him in spirit and in truth. We shall shew that, unaided by revelation, he never has done this; that with it he has risen superior in the moral scale to those who have not known God through its medium. For the present let us hear what is said of the light of nature, and its sufficiency for the moral and intellectual necessities of humanity, by one of its advocates.

"The word of God (says Mr. Paine*) is the creation we behold. And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man. It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The creation speaketk an universal language, independently of human speech, or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not: it publishes itself from one end of the earth to another. It preaches to all nations, and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

These are the assertions of the advocates of the sufficiency of the light of nature. The advocates of revelation have a right to expect evidence in support of the system of their opponents. A rational deist will admit that assertion is not proof, and we ask him to put this question to himself-What evidence ought to be adduced in support of this statement? He surely will not say that those nations who have professed to guide themselves by the light of revelation, are proofs of the sufficiency of the light of Nature, unaided by revelation. The only mode of establishing the sufficiency of the light of nature is to refer to those nations who have not possessed the light of revelation. Book of Creation (to use the language of Mr. Paine) speaketh an universal language, if it be "an ever existing "original, which every man can read," if it " publishes "itself from one end of the earth to the other," if "it "teaches to all nations all that is necessary for man to know of God," some one of the multitude of nations, of which history furnishes the knowledge, can be referred to in proof of the assertion-the affirmative is upon those who assert the fact; and when it is said that "the belief of a "God is, of all beliefs, the most easy, because it arises out

* Age of Reason.

If the

"of necessity, "* the friends of revelation may surely ask for a solitary instance of the fact. They can, however, go far to prove the negative of the assertion, from the intentional admissions of some, and the unintentional admissions of others, from the records of history, and from the knowledge which those who have had intercourse with the nations of recently discovered countries, have aquired and made known. We beg our readers to attend to the language of Mr. Paine before quoted, and to compare their assertions with the following extracts from the reasoning of Mr. Hume, another enemy to revelation, in proof of the propositionthat polytheism, not the belief in one God, was the primary religion of man.

"It appears to me, that if we consider the improvement of human society, from rude beginnings to a state of greater perfection, polytheism, or idolatry, was, and necessarily must have been, the first and most ancient religion of mankind. This opinion I shall endeavour to confirm by the following arguments:

"It is a matter of fact incontestable that, about 1700 years ago, all mankind were polytheists; the doubtful and sceptical principles of a few philosophers, or the theism, and that too not entirely pure, of one or two nations, form no objection worth regarding. Behold then the clear testimony of history. The farther we mount up into antiquity, the more do we find mankind plunged into polytheism—no marks, no symptoms of any more perfect religion. The most ancient records of human race still presents us with that system, as the popular and established creed. The north, the south, the east, the west, give their unanimous testimony to the same fact. What can be opposed to so full an evidence? As far as writing or history reaches, mankind, in ancient times, appear universally to have been polytheists. Shall we assert, that in more ancient times, before the knowledge of letters, or the discovery of any art or science, man entertained the principles of pure theism. That is, while they were ignorant and barbarous, they discovered truth, but fell into error, as soon as they acquired learning and politeness. But, in this assertion, you not only contradict all appearance of probability, but also our present experience concerning the principles and opinions of barbarous nations: the savage tribes of America, Africa, and Asia, are all idolaters.

"It seems certain that, according to the progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude must first entertain some grovelling and familiar notion of superior powers, before they stretch their conception to that perfect Being, who bestowed order on the whole frame of nature. We may as reasonably imagine that men inhabited palaces before huts and cottages, or studied geometry before agriculture, as assert that the Deity appeared to them a pure spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, before he was apprehended to be a powerful, though limited being, with human passions and appetites, limbs and organs. The mind rises gradually from inferior to superior; by abstracting from what is imperfect, it forms an idea of perfection; and slowly distinguishing the nobler parts of its own frame from the grosser, it learns to transfer only the former, much elevated and refined, to

* Age of Reason.

The Natural History of Religion.

its divinity. Nothing could disturb this natural progress of thought, but some obvious and invincible argument, which might immediately lead the mind into the pure principles of theism, and make it overleap, at one bound, the vast interval which is interposed between the human and divine nature. But though I allow that the order and frame of the universe, when acurately examined, affords such an argument, yet I can never think that this consideration could have an influence on mankind when they formed their first rude notions of religion. The causes of such objects as are quite familiar to us, never strike our attention or curiosity; and, however extraordinary or surprising these objects in themselves, they are passed over by the raw and ignorant multitude, without much examination or inquiry. Adam rising at once, in Paradise, and in the full perfection of his faculties, would naturally, as represented by Milton, be astonished at the glorious appearances of nature, the heavens, the air, the earth, his own organs and members, and would be led to ask-whence this wonderful scene arose? But a barbarous, necessitous animal, (such as man is on the first origin of society) pressed by such numerous wants and passions, has no leisure to admire the regular face of nature, or make inquiries concerning the cause of those objects, to which, from his infancy, he has been gradually accustomed. On the contrary, the more regular and uniform, that is, the more perfect nature appears, the more he is familiarized to it, and the less inclined to scrutinize and examine it; a monstrous birth excites his curiosity, and is deemed a prodigy; it alarms him from its novelty, and immediately sets him a trembling, and sacrifisrng and praying; but an animal, complete in all its limbs and organs, is to him an ordinary spectacle, and produces no religious opinion or affection. Ask him whence that animal arose, he will tell you from the copulation of its parents, and these, whence, from the copulation of theirs. A few removes satisfy his curiosity, and set the objects at such a distance, that he entirely loses sight of them. Imagine not that he will so much as start the question -whence the first animal, much less whence the whole system or united fabric of the universe arose. Or, if you start such a question to him, expect not that he will employ his mind with any anxiety about a subject so remote, so uninteresting, and which so much exceeds the bounds of his capacity."

The religion of nature is nothing more than the inferences or conclusions which each individual man draws from the works of God, as to his being and attributes; the clown draws few, if any; the philosopher many, and various; and the religion is as infinitely varied as the combinations of thought, and the deductions of the myriads, to whom the power of thought is given. Authority is out of the question; there can be no common standard. The "Book "of Creation," it is true, is open to all; but no one nation can be named to which it has taught all that is necessary for man to know. Surely there is a sad deficiency in the evidence which is to prove the sufficiency of this religion. It publishes itself, say its advocates, from one end of the earth to the other; and the evidence adduced is, we presume, to be brought from the followers of Mahomet, the disciples of Zoroaster, the various Indian sects, the Tartar hordes, the African savages, the American Indians, the

recently discovered Esquimaux, and the multitude of worshippers of birds, beasts, insects, and idols, or from the pagan mythologists.

Let us see from Mr. Volney what has been, and is, in fact, the teaching of this universal religion, which communicates all that is necessary for man to know. He has condensed the history of the religion of all nations, in his Ruins of Empires; and the opponent of revelation cannot object his partiality for revelation against the authority of his testimony.

"Behind them came the less magnificent standards of a multitude of Gods, male, female, and hermaphrodite, related to, and connected with, the three principal, who pass their lives in intestine war, and are, in this respect, imitated by their worshippers. These Gods have need of nothing, and receive offerings without ceasing. Their attributes are omnipotence and ubiquity; and a Bramin, with some petty charm, imprisons them in an image, or in a pitcher, and retails their favours according to his will and pleasure.

"As these standards passed, an innumerable crowd of others presented themselves to our eyes, and the genius exclaimed-I should never come to a conclusion, were I to detail to you all the different systems of belief which divide these nations. Here the Tartar hordes adore-under the figure of animals, insects, and birds-the good and evil Genii; who, under a principal but indolent divinity, govern the universe by their idolatry, giving us an image of the ancient paganism of the western world. You see the strange dress of the Chamans-a robe of leather, fringed with little bells and rattles, embroidered with idols of iron, claws of birds, skins of serpents, and heads of owls; they are agitated with artificial convulsions, and with magical cries invoke the dead to deceive the living. In this place you behold the sooty inhabitants of Africa, who, while they worship their Fetiches, entertain the same opinions. The inhabitant of Juida adores God under the figure of an enormous serpent, which, for their misfortune, the swine reward as a delicious morsal. The Teleutean dresses the figure of his God in a variety of gaudy colours, like a Russian soldier. And the Kamchadale, finding that every thing goes on ill in this world, and under his climate, represents God to himself under the figure of an ill-natured and arbitrary old man, smoking his pipe, and sitting in his traineau, employed in the hunting of foxes and martins. In fine, there are a hundred other savage nations, who, entertaining none of these ideas of civilized countries respecting God, the soul, and a future state, exercise no species of worship, and yet are not less favoured with the gifts of nature, in the IRRELIGION to which nature has destined them."

Thus then upon the shewing of the advocates of the Book of Nature-polytheism, idolatry, and irreligion, have been the results of its teachings; whilst, as we shall evidence in our next, Revelation alone has exhibited to the world correct conceptions of the character and requirements of the Invisible Creator.