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probation of their own minds in their reflections on their conduct, so fully as they could wish to do it, they might dread the more impartial judgment of God. But this apprehension and restraint, to whatever it might amount, would be wholly removed on the supposition of there being no God, no providence, or future state. A vicious unbeliever in revelation would therefore naturally not be displeased on finding the evidence for this belief weaker than he had thought it to be, and rejoice when he could think it to be of no weight at all. And this shows the natural tendency of deism to atheism. If a man be an unbeliever in a future state, it is of little or no consequence with respect to his conduct, whether he believe in the being of a God or not; because on that supposition this belief would add nothing to the sanctions of virtue.

Or, supposing the disposition, or bias, that leads a man to infidelity be not a propensity to any kind of vicious indulgence, but only a wish to be considered as a person free from vulgar prejudices, and one who thinks for himself; he will be farther removed from the vulgar by rejecting the belief of a God, a providence, and a future state, than by the rejection of revelation only. If he have any thing of this disposition, which is felt in a greater or less degree by most persons of liberal education, or who have much intercourse with the fashionable world, he will feel more pride and self-complacence in proportion as he recedes farther from the ideas and sentiments of those whose education has been more confined, and who have seen less of the world than he has done.

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M. Volney's account of the primitive condition of man, without any known author or guide, is not a little curious. He says "it is a sufficient answer to all systems which suppose the interposition of a God, in the origin of the world, 'that man receives all his ideas by means of his senses;' that at his origin man was formed naked, with respect to body and mind, thrown by accident upon the earth, confused and savage, an orphan abandoned by the unknown power

wants.

which produced him. He found no being descended from the heaven to inform him of his wants, which he learns only from his senses, or of his duties, which arise only from his Like other animals, without experience of the past, or foresight of the future, he wandered in the midst of the forest, guided and governed by the affections of his nature. By the pain of hunger he was led to his food, and to provide for his sustenance; by the intemperature of the air he wished to cover his body, and he made himself clothes; by the attraction of pleasure he approached a being like himself, and perpetuated his species.'"

M. Volney did not, surely, consider that the first man, let him have had a maker or no maker; let him have dropped from the clouds, or have risen out of the earth; let him have been produced in a state of infancy or of manhood ; yet that, without instruction, he must have perished before he could, by his own sensations and experience, have acquired knowledge enough to preserve his life. The pain of hunger would have come upon him long before he could have learned to walk, or have got the use of any of his limbs; and the more full grown he was at the time of his production, the more difficult would his learning to walk, or even to crawl, have been. Man, therefore, must have had a guide as well as a maker; and divine interposition was absolutely necessary at his entrance into life. M. Volney's idea was evidently that of a Robinson Crusoe, thrown upon an uninhabited island, with all the knowledge that he had acquired in the course of his former life. His primitive man must have been produced with the instinctive knowledge of a gardener at least. He must have been able to distinguish fruits that were wholesome from those that were noxious, and have got, by some means or other, the use of his limbs, his eyes, and other senses, before it would have been in his power to avail himself of that knowledge.

Let M. Volney consider what he himself, with his present strength of muscles and acuteness of intellect, could have

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TENDENCY TO ATHEISM IN MODERN UNBELIEVERS.

done, in the situation of his primitive man. Let him have been left on the earth in ever so favorable a climate, and in ever so warm and comfortable a place, so as to want no clothing; yet, having no ideas but such as he got by the impression of the objects around him, he would have been no better than a great sprawling infant. By the stimulus of light he would have opened and shut his eyes, but would have had no idea of the relative distances of any objects. The nearest tree, the remotest hill, and even the heavenly bodies would have seemed to be in the same plane and all contiguous to him. He might have moved his arms and legs in an automatic manner, but he would not have been able to rise from the ground. He would have felt the pain of hunger; but though the most proper food should have happened to be ever so near to him, he could not have known, without experience, that eating would remove that pain. He would therefore have lain a helpless prey to the first wild beast, if there were any, that should have happened to find him. If it should have happened that a female, of the same size, had been produced at the same time, and have been dropped by another accident (the chance of which must have been very small indeed) ever so near him; being equally ignorant, they would have been equally helpless, and must soon have perished together, without any perpetuation of the species. All would have been to begin again, and to no better purpose.

If M. Volney will give himself time to think a little more closely on this important subject, he will find that Divine interpositions must have been necessary at least at the formation of man, or that his formation would have been in vain; and if they were necessary then, they may have been expedient, since that time. Moses's account of the primitive state of man, though not without its difficulties, is certainly much more probable than that of M. Volney. Indeed, no hypothesis can well be more improbable than his.

THE PREVALENCE OF INFIDELITY.

ARDENTLY as the zealous Christian must wish for the extension of his religion, and the universal prevalence of those principles which he conceives calculated to enlighten his own mind, to cheer his heart under all the vicissitudes of life, and to give him hope even in death; and much as he will, consequently, lament the prevalence of principles which have an opposite tendency; yet, upon a more extensive view of the subject, he will see no reason to be disturbed or alarmed at the present aspect of things.

The prevalence of infidelity, great as it certainly is, can never be universal. Admitting revealed religion to be ever so ill-founded, no better, for example, than the heathenism of the Greeks and Romans, yet being the faith of the bulk of the common people in all countries called Christian, and they having a strong attachment to it, it may be taken for granted that they will long continue to believe it; since it is universally true that the common people, who receive their opinions and practices from their ancestors, and are little disposed to speculate, are very backward to change them, and retain them a long time after the more thinking and inquisitive abandon them. This we see to be the case even when the new religion has something the most inviting to offer in the place of the system that is to be given up. Heathenism continued in many villages of the Roman empire six hundred years after the promulgation of Christianity. But as modern unbelievers do not pretend to have any thing to propose as an

equivalent to what the Christian must abandon, it may be expected to continue much longer in the world, and independently of any rational evidence in its favor.

But the rational Christian, having no doubt of the truth of his religion, is confident that it will finally prevail, and by its own evidence, when it comes to be attended to, bear down all opposition. It will be sufficient to all impartial persons, even those who have not the leisure, or the means, of entering into the historical investigation themselves, that the truly intelligent, the inquisitive, the candid, and the virtuous, will be the friends of revelation; and that the firm belief of it tends to form a character superior to that of unbelievers, inspiring a dignity and elevation of mind incompatible with any thing mean or base.

The true Christian, having a constant respect to God, a providence, and a future state, feels himself less interested in the things that excite the avarice, the ambition, and other base passions of men; and consequently his mind, elevated by devotion, more easily expands itself into universal benevolence, and all the heroic virtues that are connected with it. The Christian, believing that every thing under the government of God will have a glorious termination in universal virtue and universal happiness, easily yields himself the willing instrument in the hands of Providence, for so great a purpose; and considering himself as, with the apostle, a worker together with God, he will live a life of habitual devotion and benevolence; sentiments which are inconsistent with a propensity to sensual and irregular indulgence.

On the other hand, the generality of unbelievers will appear to be persons to whom the subject of religion is on some account or other, unpleasant; who, therefore, give but little attention to it or its evidences, and therefore cannot be deemed competent judges of them, whatever be their ability or knowledge in other respects. A great proportion of them, it cannot be denied, are also profligate and licentious in their

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