members of the convention, named Dupont, had avowed, in the course of a debate, at an early stage of the revolution, that nature and reason were his only divinities. "I frankly

confess," he said, "that I am an atheist." This speech, at the time it was uttered, occasioned, from its novelty and boldness, (rather than from any better principle,) considerable sensation in France, and drew forth, in this country, a pamphlet from the pen of the late excellent Hannah More. As the revolution proceeded, however, atheism and irreligion assumed a bolder front. A French curate wrote to the convention that he could no longer continue in his profession, as he felt that what he was teaching was false. Honourable mention having been made in the convention's minutes of this communication, the curate's example became infectious, and priests from all quarters poured in letters announcing that they had left the church, and betaken themselves to a more honest occupation. A formal declaration of the same irreligious principles was made by Gobet, bishop of Paris, and several members of his diocese. Repairing to the National Convention in a body, they openly abjured the Christian religion, and, doffing their sacerdotal

robes, declared that liberty and equality should henceforth be the only objects of their worship. The unhappy apostates were received with a fraternal embrace by the members of the convention, who warmly complimented them on their emancipation from the fetters of superstition.

The plunder of the various churches throughout the metropolis and country, followed close upon the transactions we have been describing. All the bells (except one kept for the purpose of sounding revolutionary signals) were taken down from the belfries, and melted into cannon. The spires of the churches were, in many cases, levelled; because they violated the republican principle of equality, by rising above other edifices! The communion plate was coined into money and replenished the national treasury, while the churches themselves formed warehouses or stables. Over the entrance to the public cemeteries was inscribed, "Death is an eternal sleep." The guillotine was mockingly termed "holy." A new calendar was formed, in which the bloody Marat was canonized as a saint, or, to speak with more propriety, as a demon. Hymns of worship, even, were chanted to his memory. Mar

riage was deprived of all religious obligation, and considered only as an arrangement of convenience, which might be annulled at the pleasure of the contracting parties. Divorces, as might have been expected, became of the most frequent occurrence, and amounted, in Paris alone, in the course of three months, to the number of five hundred and sixty-two, while the marriages during the same period were only one thousand seven hundred and eightyfive. The plunder of the churches was accompanied by insults of a peculiarly offensive character. The vestments used by the priests were made into coverings for asses, and these animals, ranged in procession, were made to drag behind them the missals of the Roman Catholic church, and even, if some writers are to be believed, the Holy Scriptures themselves.

The crowning exhibition of impiety, however, was still to follow. Two miserable men, named Chaumette and Hebert, members of the municipality of Paris, one day waited on the convention at the head of a procession to which history offers no parallel. A number of young females, wearing tricolor sashes, walked before another female mysteriously veiled and clothed in azure garments. This personage having

been led forward with great ceremony, Chaumette announced to the assembly that the time had arrived when men should cease to fear a supreme Being, who had no existence save in their imaginations, and that he now introduced, in the Goddess of Reason, an object more worthy of their homage. "Fall, O veil of reason," he added, "fall before this venerable assembly." As he uttered these words, he drew aside the veil, and revealed to the gaze of his audience the features of a woman of infamous character, who was the mistress of one Momoro, a bookseller. The Goddess of Reason was embraced by the president, and afterwards conducted by the convention to the ancient cathedral of Nôtre Dame. This building had been fitted up for the occasion with scenery like a theatre, while tables covered with meats and wines were ranged around. The goddess was led to the altar and there enthroned, as the object of national worship; a hymn to liberty was then sung-but from the contemplation of the riot, drunkenness, and orgies which followed, modesty and decorum retire abashed. The rites of a heathen temple found, on this occasion, a parallel on the banks of the Seine. In the midst of this scene of wild disorder,

it is to be recorded, that one unknown voice exclaimed aloud from the throng of spectators, "O God, thou wilt yet be avenged !"

The Divine vengeance did, indeed, most justly fall on the perpetrators of this fearful insult to the Majesty of heaven. The mode of its infliction too, as shown in our subsequent narrative, will be found to have vindicated the wisdom of God's government, and to have proved the certainty with which sin becomes the instrument of its own punishment. Let it not be supposed, however, that the principles from which the excesses just described flowed, were peculiar to the times of the French revolution. The human heart is by nature enmity against God, and in every age, when unrenewed by Divine grace, its language has been that of Pharaoh of old, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?" Exod. v. 2. To the true Christian there is something deeply affecting in the spectacle of his fellow-creatures thus fleeing from the presence of that Being whom he has found to be a fountain of overflowing love. Once, it is true, he himself, like others, was "foolish, disobedient, deceived." Now, however, contrasting his former wretchedness with his present happiness, he wonders at