that man would never be able to arrive either at truth or certainty. The bulk of mankind, even in the most improved situation and circumstances, are careless of all speculative enquiries, because they find themselves sufficiently occupied in providing for their corporeal wants; and of those who should have leisure and inclination to spend their time in the investigation of truth, few would arrive at any certain conclusion; and there would, in all probability, be as many contradictory systems as enquirers. With faculties so confined, and sources of information so uncertain and variable, it must be a degree of presumption, scarce credible, in any human being to determine in his own mind against the being of a God, or the possibility of a divine revelation. It is judging of what he has no power to judge. It. is arguing without data, and concluding without reason. Speculation on such subjects is vain, impracticable and inconclusive. We are only capable of judging of the credibility of the fact,—and to the investigation. of this all our enquiries must necessarily tend, or they will mislead us, by a mist of unmeaning words, into the labyrinth of

error.

"There is no period of time, nor any set of people, to which we can confidently refer, in which and among whom we do not. trace some species of religion, and some pretences to divine communications. A belief.

so universal must be the effect either of ar innate conviction,-of some extravagant fancy in ancient times,-or of something real. We find nothing in the nature or progress of the human mind which warrants us to suppose that any of our ideas are innate. It must therefore have been the effect of fancy, or of some actual communication. If we

suppose, for a moment, that the whole is the effect of fancy, and that there is no foundation, in fact, for believing either in a God or in religion, the person who first suggested these notions to his fellow men, (for some one or more must, on this supposition, have done so,) must have had unusual prejudices to struggle against, and an unusual fortitude of mind to attempt to settle his contemporaries in the belief of a doctrine so totally new to them, and which he must have known to be a mere whim or conception of his own. Men, in the early ages of the world, as in those more improved, would in general be so occupied with their own private concerns and employments, as to be little disposed to pay attention to a circumstance so new, and which, though even proved by speculative arguments ever so plain, the bulk of men, to whom such an idea had never once occurred, would have been little able to understand, and not much disposed to attend to. But how came this person or persons to light on an idea so extraordinary? It is easy for us, who are acquainted with such sub

jects from our earliest years, so as almost to conceive them to be first principles, to reason abstractedly on the being of a God, and the nature of a revelation: But if no communication of either was ever made in any age, he must have been the most extraordinary genius the world has ever heard of, who first contrived the artful tale; and his success has been equal to his abilities; since there is no period to which we can advert, nor any people whose history we are acquainted with, but who possess those ideas. in some way or other. His success, in propagating a falsehood, is more extraordinary than the contrivance of it;-in propagating a falsehood, too, which would most materially affect the conduct of those who were induced to believe it; and yet of any such person or persons, or of the nature and progress of their doctrine, no trace is left, and no probable account can be given; unless we have recourse to those books which Jews and Christians believe to be divine.

"If there were no such being as God, and, consequently, if no divine communication was ever made to man, the idea of such an existence, and of such a revelation, never could have occurred to any human being. We can reason from axioms to something higher; from principles already known, or proved, we can deduce conclusions with which we were before unacquainted. But the case before us, as it is

beyond the limits of human observation, appears to be without the province of human reason. The mind of man cannot create a single idea. We can conceive such a thing as a golden mountain; but, had we never seen nor heard of a mountain, and were we totally ignorant of the metal called gold, such a conception would be impossible. If there were gradations in impossibility, I should deem it still more impossible for any human being to conceive the idea of God, unless there really be such a being; or of a divine revelation, unless such a thing actually took place. Almost all our inventions, however useful, or however signal, and especially such as occur in ages little improved, are more the effect of chance than of reason and argument. We afterwards fortify them by reasoning, and shew by what natural process they might have been made out; but we generally owe the first thought more to accident than to scientific investigation. But where reasoning happens to be the source of invention, and it is doubtless the only source to be depended on, there must be some intermediate steps by which we proceed from less to greater; some analogy on which we can ground conjecture or argument. But here nothing of this kind obtains; and to conceive the whole to be the effect of accident, is still more absurd. No reason can be assigned for such extravagant notions (as on the supposition of their

falsehood, we must esteem them) arising at all, and still less for their appearing as matters of fact, on the testimony of history and general belief. But if, absurds the supposition is, we should imagine them to be the gradual effect of a chance-thought, it is still equally impossible to account for their general dissemination all over the world, without even, in the earliest ages to which we can refer, leaving a single trace of the original inventor. It is neither probable nor possible, unless these notions were known. in the very infancy of society, to the very first family which ever existed,-that in their extent they should have been so general, and in their grand outlines so similar. They who can suppose it possible, must recur to suppositions much more improbable and absurd, than, upon any principle or pretence, the account of Moses can possibly be esteemed. A large portion of mankind, both in this and every age, have erred egregiously in their opinions upon these subjects; but their very errors prove the general truth of the facts. For such notions could have had no existence at all, and much less an universal existence, had they not been, at one period, and that in the very infancy of the human race, derived from reality. It is impossible, on any principle of solid reasoning, to conceive that man,-left to himself alone, and from observations constantly interrupted by the supply of his corporeal