ing wind was made to cease, "and the sea returned to her strength when the morning appeared;"* its waters sank down to their usual level, and all their natural laws came into immediate operation; and this natural action of these natural laws was quite sufficient to overwhelm the pursuing Pharaoh and all his hosts. No miraculous impulse or energy was then necessary; "the depths covered them; they sank unto the bottom as a stone."t Thus, all the miracles of God are but an increased action or a new direction given to existing natural laws, which none but he can impart to them; or, if it be more expedient, the local presence and application of a more distant law, which, till thus commanded, was operating elsewhere. This local application, in particular places, of more remote laws of nature, is a part of its established plan. The seaman beholds this in every storm that shakes him. He sees the distant law of nature rise up visibly from the edge of his horizon in a small black cloud. No such is about him as he is serenely gliding on the peaceful wave. But the law that was elsewhere, the fearful agency that can convulse the ocean when it comes over it, soon approaches, and throws into tremendous agitation the floods which it can master while it is acting upon them. At length it departs from that locality, and travels again into a distant region, to produce similar effects there. All rains are of this description. They bring from other parts laws and agencies which were abiding there, either above or beyond, and also the material substance which they actuate into immediate neighbourhood and contact with the district where they fall. When natural causes move and act only as it has been ordained and provided in the appointed plan and course of nature that they shall move and act, their operation is not miraculous. The miracle begins when that effect begins which the established mechanism of nature cannot produce. This was effected when Elijah, in competition with the priests of Baal, left the decision of the moral contest as to the reality of the Jehovah whom he proclaimed to the displayed will of his awful Master. A local direction was invisibly given by the Supreme Invisible, whom all things obey, to a sufficient body of electric fluid not at that moment there in an accumulated * Exodus, c. xiv., v. 27, 28. † Ib., c. xv., v 5, state; and the fiery stream came instantly from the parts where it was in quiescence or diffusion, and was darted down in obedience to the Almighty mandate upon the altar which it was commissioned to inflame.* Here was no law of nature violated; but a resting and a distant one was brought from another place, and put into such an energy and collective force as accomplished the intended purpose. By doing this, it manifested the reality of the Deity by its presence and operation, because only he could so change its locality, and so immediately and specifically apply it. The people felt this, and expressed their conviction of it from the deciding result. This is quite intelligible to us by what happens in the operations of man's intelligence. In those grand naval and military operations which are so exciting in history, are instances of this local transfer of laws of nature from one region to another by human agency. It was thus that Nelson carried the tremendous laws of nature, which his ships of war contained in their quiescent state, from the coasts which he had been guarding, across the whole breadth of the Mediterranean, into the Bay of Aboukir, to put them there into that terrific action which first shook the ascendency and power of the French republic, and first checked the, till then, irresistible Bonaparte. So this extraordinary general, at a future day, transferred, with a rapidity almost unequalled, his military laws of nature, instruments, and agencies, from their resting state at Boulogne and elsewhere, to overwhelm so decisively the astonished Mack at Ulm and Menningen. The difference between these operations and the Divine miracles we have been alluding to is, that man has subjected some of the laws of nature to his power, and can use and apply them to a certain extent, and in such ways as these, but no further; and what man and nature can do of themselves is no miracle. It is when laws of nature are used and directed to do what a superhuman and supernatural power and intelligence can alone move and guide them to effectuate, that the miraculous phenomenon appears, and, by appearing, bears in its result, as it were, the inscription upon it, that "The special power of the Deity is specially doing this." He thereby marks incontestably what the Israelites * 1 Kings, c. xviii., v. 38. "And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces, and they said, 'The Lord, He is THE GOD! the Lord, He is the God!"-Ib. V. 39. felt and expressed-"The Lord! He is the God." He can and will do, at all times, what he shall deem proper. He consults no mortal being as to the period, place, or manner of his interpositions. He forms his own plans, executes his own purposes, and introduces his interferences by his own sacred will and judgment, whenever he thinks them necessary and chooses to apply them. LETTER XXXVI. Rise and Prevalence of Paganism in the fifth century after the Deluge. -Its Deleterious Effects and Self-perpetuation.-Human Causes continued, and could not subvert it.-Divine Interposition, by an Intellectual Process, essential both for Religious and Moral Tuition and Improvement. MY DEAR SYDNEY, The supernatural agency which was exerted in the production of the deluge, and of the terrestrial alterations and new formations of surface which accompanied it, has been already stated in the former parts of our correspondence.* When the waters had been withdrawn from such parts of the earth as were to be, at that time, inhabited by the renewed race as their numbers increased, Noah and his family descended from the ark, and began the cultivation of the ground from which they were to subsist. The Deity communicated himself fully to them, and gave them his commands, and promised them his protection and blessings. But, as soon as the new generations arose, he deemed it proper to exert another interference in their affairs, and this was to produce that division and separation of their general body and social aggregation into distinct portions of population; and to urge these to settle apart from each other, in order to grow up into independent tribes and nations, mostly, or for a long time, unconnected with each other, as we noticed in the former letters. Among the consequences of this dispersion was that great diversity of habits, qualities, actions, and attainments which in time dis *See Vol. II., Letter XXII. See Vol. II., Letters XXII. and XXIV. † Gen., c. ix. tinguished mankind into two very contrasted conditions-the civilized and the uncivilized. Both these states of society have been also mentioned to you, and an outline was drawn of the principal nations of antiquity which became prominent in the world for their civilizing improvements and intellectual cultivation.* No further interpositions of Divine agency occurred in the history of mankind from the time of this dispersion for a period of 326 years. During that interval, the human race were left to multiply and act in the several localities of their populations, according to their natural laws and circumstances. The regions of the earth which they were then occupying appear to have been those which lie between the Mediterranean, the Nile, the Euphrates, and the northern mountains of Asia, and principally in Syria, in its largest sense, and in Egypt. The most remarkable feature at this age of the world, which arose in all these populations, and became the general character of the human mind in that stage of its growth, was a dislike to the actual government of the real God of nature, and a deviation into that theory of Deity, and into those practices of religious worship which we commonly call paganism or heathenism. As Noah and his sons had a clear revelation from God of himself, specially to them, it is difficult, from the absence of detailed history on this point, to account for the origin and universal adoption of such fatal mistakes; except that the moral obedience required by our Creator was then, and has always since been, unpalatable, inconvenient, and unpractised. To reconcile self-will and self-gratification with the uneasy reason and reproving memory, doubts and disbelief were circulated and cherished as to the existing ideas about him; and a different hypothesis was invented by some, and adopted by all, that he either was not in being at all, or was not what he had been represented to be. Other ideas of him were started and encouraged, until the impression became general that such a Being, if he existed, had no concern with our world, but that this contained many gods instead of one, and of a different kind and character from what he had appeared to be. The opinion also arose that these were or could be rendered visible to human sense, and brought to dwell among mankind, and could be gratified and propitiated by hu* Vol. II., Letter XXV. VOL. III.-I1 man ceremonies, by offerings of food and fragrance, and by the sacrifice and burning of animals, whose smoke and ascending particles, as extricated by the flames which burnt them, these supposed divinities were imagined to inhale, and to be nourished or pleased by. The sun, moon, and planets, that were discerned to move in the skies above us, were the first objects that were conceived to be the divinities of the world, but afterward other inventions were added to them. Egypt thought that its deities assumed the form of particular animals, and lived in them, and therefore placed these in its temples as the subjects of its worship. But the prevailing tendency was to make human figures of wood or stone, and to suppose that, in these, when placed in consecrated mansions, the divinities they preferred and fancied usually resided. When this custom was established, idolatry was added to polytheism, and the combination of these two systems, in many varieties of theories and imaginations, became the only religion which mankind, as they enlarged, would retain or understand. These inventions excluded and superseded the real Deity in the human mind. Mankind determined to make their gods for themselves, and as like themselves as possible, and to admit and worship no others than such as they thus devised and framed, and made pleasant to their own feelings, and familiar to their daily habits, and with passions, tastes, humours, and senses like their own. They made their gods the image or likeness of man, instead of raising themselves to be what they had been designed to be the image and likeness of the only real God. It would lead me beyond my bounds to enter into the detail and progress of these absurdities, or to trace them to the specific causes from which they originated, and by which they were modified into all their natural varieties. It is sufficient to state these main outlines to you, and to desire you to remark that the delusion has been so infatuating to the human mind; such a fond and popular persuasion, that it spread over all the world, and has never quitted it. In former times it predominated everywhere in it, and even still reigns the favourite religion of the greatest number of mankind. rules and darkens the reason, and perverts the feelings in every part of the globe, except where Judaism and Christianity, and their spurious offspring, Mohammedanism, have established their opposing systems. It If the Jewish nation had not been raised up, nor Christian |