But all Divine tuition and improvement were lost to the human world as soon as paganism separated it from its God;" and hence the process for the recovery and melioration of the human mind, which then became necessary, was wanted as much for the moral illumination and guidance as for the religious instruction of human nature.

LETTER XXXVII.

Mankind unable to liberate themselves from their Pagan Superstitions or from Atheism.-The general Disposition to discredit Specific Revelations.-Divine Agency has been indispensable to rescue Mankind from those Errors and Perversions.

MY DEAR SYDNEY,

The preceding facts and remarks lead us to the conclusion that the renewed race of mankind, if they had been left wholly to themselves, would have become, as they did generally become wherever thinking and acting solely on their own will and inclinations, a pagan and unmoralized population, grossly superstitious or atheistical, selfish, violent, cruel, fantastical, and corrupt. Such was the general result. Some were more ignorant and animalized than others; brutish in most of their habits; addicted to war and revenge; indifferent to human bloodshed; persecuting, attacking, and deceiving each other; plundering and murdering, or indolent, stupid, and debased. These were the too frequent features of the ancient population, with pleasing mixtures of better qualities in some; and such our contemporaries too much incline to be, in those regions of our present world where paganism, or the abnegation but be individual argument, individual speculation, and individual inferences, which others may concur in or dispute, and which will always be a subject of ingenious discussion. The attacks lately made on Dr. Paley, one of our wisest moralists, are existing evidence of this fact. If he be right, his opponents are wrong; if their notions are more just, he has erred. So it will always be with all human systems of morality. Human moralists, urging only their reasonings, are intellectual gladiators, successively combating each other before the public eye, frequently gaining temporary victories, but never an acknowledged or commanding soyereignty. Certainty and real obligation will attend wise precepts and instructions only.

VOL. III.-KK

or ignorance of the real Deity exists; and where polytheistic and idolatrous or atheistical superstitions have taken his place. It seems a kind of verbal contradiction to talk of atheistical superstitions, as atheism professes to abolish all superstition; but it is not only true that atheism, in all parts of the world, has superstitions peculiar to itself, but there is an atheistical superstition actually established in the earth, with all the artificial rites and costumes of a national hierarchy and worship. This is the Buddhist paganism, in which no deity is taught or believed; where the founder of it, Buddha, is revered himself; and in which demons are accredited and upheld as evil beings, governing or afflicting mankind, and to whom sacred ceremonies of fear or hope are nationally performed. This exists in Ceylon, Siam, and in other regions on the eastern seas.* Atheism in France had the goddess of Reason.

That mankind are unable or unwilling to liberate themselves from such absurdities, such abominations, and such slavery, is a fact which experience forces upon our notice. The continued existence of such a system as the Siamese and Ceylonese paganism proves it; for the priests of this have no small share of understanding, and cultivated acuteness, and worldly knowledge; and both they and their votaries have stoutly resisted all change and improvement. They are still actively opposing the enlightening exertions and example of their Christian masters. The Japanese, though in many respects a very cultivated people, fiercely maintain their polytheistic idolatry; have destroyed what Christians once were made there, and sternly, with watchful and deadly policy, pro

* Mr. Gutzslaff, in May, 1831, had lived three years in Siam : he mentions, "All religions are tolerated in Siam, but Buddhism is the religion of the state, and all the public institutions are for the promotion of this superstition. Buddhism is atheism, according to the creed which one of the Siamese highpriests gave me. Their highest degree of happiness consists in annihilation-the greatest enjoyment is in indolence-their sole hope is founded on endless transmigrations-they are firmly assured that, by degrees, in the course of some thousands of years, they will come to be a king."-Gutzslaff's Journal, p. 26.

† A missionary in Ceylon states, "Matura is the place where Buddhism most flourishes-its stronghold. The principal wealth of the district is devoted to Buddhism. Its priesthood, more than 700 in number, is active; skilful and active enemies; almost every village of importance has its priest. We have a refined, metaphysical system to oppose, upheld by men of considerable oriental learning and great acuteness, who also make great professions of sanctity."-Miss. Reg., 1836, p. 152. But, under our government, Christianity is beginning to take root there.

hibit the introduction of all better systems and knowledge than their monstrous and inherited heathenism. The Burmese government has prohibited Christianity and silenced its teachers. * The whole of Africa, south of the Atlas and the Great Desert, is in the same state of mind and feeling. The real Deity is there universally forsaken, unknown, and uncared for; and the most unintellectual and ignorant paganisms, in various forms, but equally absurd, and in some parts sanguinary and inhuman, are resolutely retained.† The Polynesian Islands of the South Sea, and the great continent of Australia, were in the same state until the Christian missionaries visited them. The government of Madagascar now persecutes Christianity, after having allowed it to be taught.‡ Nor is this intellectual depravation the character and companion of the un

* Mr. Kincaid, the American missionary at Ava, states, "The Mea-wade Woongee has shown himself particularly hostile. Ten times he has forbidden me to preach the gospel or to bring books. The subject has been taken up in the high court of the empire. On 22d March, 1835, a message came directing my immediate appearance before the court. The Woongee there inquired sternly, 'Why have you come to the royal city? 'To diffuse the knowledge of the eternal God.' 'Dare you say that the religion of the king, his princes, his nobles, and his people is false? 'No, my lord! but in my own country and in all the world, before the knowledge of the living God appeared, the people worshipped idols; and the command of God is, to go into all the world and preach this religion.' 'Stop! it is not proper to say so much; it is the wish of the king, his ministers, and myself, that you should preach no more."-Ib., p. 206. But, as part of the maritime provinces of Burma has been ceded to the English, Christianity is now taught in these, and the Burmese, being a reading nation, receive the books offered them very eagerly. Their religion is Buddhism.

Captain Marryat says, "I never met with a Burman, not even a lad, who could not read and write. I once asked a Burmah soldier what was his idea of a future state; he said, 'I shall be turned into a buffalo, and shall lie down in a meadow of grass higher than my head, and shall eat all day long, and there won't be a single moscheto to annoy me.'"Metrop. Mag., 1836, p. 193.

†The kingdoms of Ashantee, Dahomey, and others on the Gold Coast have been prodigal in their human sacrifices.

The Cape of Good Hope newspaper, in February, 1836, mentioned that "the Queen of Madagascar had issued an edict suppressing the profession of Christianity throughout her dominions, and prohibiting any departure from the customs of her ancestors." Before this interdict, un der the former king, Radama, the missionaries had translated and printed the Scriptures in the Malagese language; all ranks began to learn to read, and applied for those books with such avidity, the Rev. Mr. Freeman says, "that we cannot procure a supply to meet the demand; I think the whole of the rising generations will be readers."-Rep. Bible Soc., p. 77, 1835.

civilized and the ignorant only. In this respect, these only resemble the most cultivated regions of the world, which the sunshine of Christianity has not illumined. Such were the Hindoo populations-a hundred millions of human beingsalthough the first order of their state was the religious and educated class, and although they abounded with colleges and authors of literative science, and exhibit much controversial ingenuity on what they have manufactured.* Such are still the more informed and more anciently-civilized Chinese. If any nation could reason or enlighten itself out of such pagan darkness and bondage, and free itself from their fetters, and errors, and evils, this great people, a third of all mankind, ought assuredly to do so; for their noblest class is the intellectua and literary order of their society. Men acquire their highest dignity of mandarins by their study of letters and knowledge, and according to their proficiency in their national writings; yet here paganism reigns unshaken and supreme, although a Chinese Socrates did appear among them in their Con-fu-tzee or Confucius, and though many of their authors express admirably some moral truthst. But the government and leaders of this immense and comparatively rational and enlightened nation not only determinedly uphold their national paganism and all its evils, but, after a knowledge of what is better, and even a reading of the books that teach it, prohibit the introduction of the sacred improvement; and this very last year, 1836, has begun a new and inflexible persecution and rejection of the offered Christianity. Thus all the culti

*To what extravagant ideas their false theories lead their educated men, two instances show:-In April, 1834, a missionary writes from Benares, their chief seat of learning-" Another pundit came up to me, exclaiming, God is in me, I am God.'" So, in the August following, two pundits approached him; "one came bawling out, I am God, I am God.' 'Well, then, you are an extraordinary man. Yes, God is in me, I am God, and so are you.' 'Do you think that I also am God?' 'Yes, you are God, every one is God.'"-Miss. Reg., 1835, p. 419-20. This is the pantheism of Spinoza, which some of the German unbelievers are teaching their pupils; so nearly are paganism and atheism allied.

"In the Chinese state religion, the material universe is worshipped as a whole and in detail. Subordinate thereto, they have gods celestial and terrestrial, and gods infernal. When the emperor, as highpriest, worships heaven, he wears robes of azure colour, in allusion to the sky; when he worships earth, his robes are yellow, to represent its clay. When the sun is the object, his dress is red; and for the moon, he wears a pale white."-Chinese Repository, printed at Canton.

"The emperor is called 'The Son of Heaven.' He is the highpriest of the nation, and the only medium of communication with the power of

vated nations of the pagan modern world, as well as the ruder and more ignorant, have arrayed themselves against the real God and his revelations as much and as resolutely as the ancient paganisms did, and as all mankind do whom religion does not interest. They prefer their own errors and habits to his tuition-to all Divine truth.

Did

From these examples, now full before our eyesight, we see that human nature, when it has thus once alienated itself from the true Deity, and adopted its own false imagination instead, cannot or will not enlighten, rectify, or meliorate itself. The same fact and certainty appeared in every part and in every age of the ancient world. Egypt was in the earliest times at the head of the human race in arts, in arms, and in all the science which was then known; and her chief order was the educated, the sacerdotal, the only literary class. Did her attainments prevent the establishment and continuity of the grossest superstition? So far from it that no people on earth had grosser. The paintings and sculptures in her temples and palaces, still remaining in their ruins, exhihit this to us. she ever abandon them of her own accord? Never; she adhered pertinaciously to them from age to age, and amid all her national changes of dynasties and foreign subjections, till the gradual prevalence of Christianity overthrew them. Did Greece, the parent of the fine arts, of taste, of literature, of oratory, of philosophy, of the drama, and of all poetry, abolish her paganisms and idols from her own choice and enlightened mind? Not at all; she upheld everything, with some modifications, to strengthen them, even while she must have despised them. Atheism made large conversions in her populations, especially after Epicurus; and the numbers increased who disbelieved and derided the national superstitions; but no one abolished them or desired to do so. St. Paul found them in this state, and was opposed by them in the day of the greatest diffusion of their intellectual attainment.* Did other heaven; and only he and his deputies may offer homage at the court of heaven."-Chin. Rep., January, 1835. As 1836 closed, the imperial decree arrived in England which had been issued in the summer by the emperor for the suppression of Christianity, and for the seizure of foreign books throughout his dominions. Translations of the Scriptures and statements of the Christian religion had been sent him.

* When called before the Areopagus, on the charge of being "a setter forth of strange gods," the effect of his admirable address was, "when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, 'We will hear thee again of this matter;'" but so few were interested