back settlements of the Western Continent, who had never heard of the Christian faith, an argument might be drawn from the fact; but the claims of men living under the meridian sun of Christianity, and of reformed Christianity, (for it was not till after the Reformation that Deists were known,) can never for a moment be admitted. As well might a foreigner residing amongst the inventions of the arts in England, seize on our brightest discoveries and claim them as his own. The fact is perfectly intelligible; the notions of modern unbelievers are no more than the twilight of revelation, after the sun of it has been set in their apostacy from God. Christianity has shamed away the grosser errors and vices of heathenism, and the unbeliever borrows now some of the revealed doctrines, in order to gain an audience amongst mankind. There is no proof that any one individual in any age or nation ever discovered any one of these principles, except as enlightened by Christianity.

But let us ask further, whether, after all, these principles are sufficient for the guidance of man-whether, after all, they lessen the necessity of a divine revelation? Now it is quite obvious that discoveries made in the seventeenth century can be no reason against the necessity of the Christian faith in the first. But, waving this, let us just ask whether these five common principles and notices are indeed held firmly and unequivocally by modern unbelievers? The fact is, the moment you begin to inquire of them, inconsistency, disagreement, mutual recrimination fill your ears. There is not one of these principles, except perhaps that of the being of a God, which is uniformly admitted, much less taught by infidel writers. Each has his own vague, defective, private, unauthorized system. Then, as to the true nature of piety and virtue, the qualities of repentance, the rule of future rewards and punishments, all is uncertainty, doubt and contradiction. And what standard have they to appeal to upon disputed questions, what authority and sanction for the promulgation of their tenets, what ground to stand upon when exposed to temptation and the suggestions of passion? Though these five principles are admitted in general terms as the dictates of natural religion by some few un

believers, yet what influence have unauthorized principles upon men's practice, how can they inculcate them, what sincerity do they show in their belief of them? Is it not notorious that infidels never enforce these truths at all, except as matters of display in argument, never employ them practically and efficiently for the regulation of their own conduct? Is it not notorious, that they look upon all religion as a mere political invention, with no real claim to acceptance on its own account? Is it not notorious, that they lean toward ancient paganism, are loud in their commendations of its "elegant divinities," to use their own phrase, and continually excuse and palliate its enormities? In fact, the love of fame, the conformity to established usages without regard to conscience the pursuit of sensual pleasures, are too evidently the principles of infidels, and demonstrate that they would soon relapse into some system of gross superstition, or into atheism itself, if the presence and the restraints of Christianity were withdrawn.

But not only are these common notices insufficient as a guide to man, but they lose all their force when disjoined from the native stock of the Christian faith. The acknowledgment of one God, of the obligations of piety and virtue, of the duty of repentance and the retribution of a future state, are all most important truths as connected with the other peculiar doctrines of Christianity; but without these peculiar doctrines, of what practical avail are they? Where are the certain proofs of the immortality of the soul? Where the terms of pardon? Where the relief for the alarmed conscience? Where the standard of truth and duty? Where the recovering principle to rescue from the gulph of moral ruin? Where the institutions of religion, and a provision for the instruction of mankind?

All is a blank. Natural religion, if you set it up for a moment, totters instantly to its fall. The Deists have travelled by a torch snatched from the temple of God; but its light has been insufficient whilst it lasted, and has gone out ere they could boast of following it. To illustrate the im

(c) Gibbon.

portance of revelation, we point to the ignorance, the fluctuations, the unsanctioned and uninfluential tenets of our modern unbelievers; even when sustained and illuminated by the vicinity of the Christian doctrine, and say that if we want an additional argument to prove the absolute and indispensable necessity of a divine revelation, we have only to plant our foot upon this very spot, cultivated by modern scepticism, and show its hopeless sterility, the utter absence of life and fruitfulness there.

III. But let us now turn our eyes for a moment to THE DIF

FERENT HEATHEN COUNTRIES OF THE PRESENT DAY.

If the light of nature under any circumstances be sufficient to guide man to his duty and happiness, we shall find the proof somewhere. If the force of conscience be capable of illuminating the path of man, we shall doubtless discover its irradiations, either in the more cultivated and civilized parts of the heathen world, or in the more unrefined.

d

To begin with the polished and civilized regions of paganism, what, I ask, is the moral and religious state of India? Is the temple of natural religion to be found there? Does the torch of unassisted reason enlighten and sanctify those countless tribes? The dominion of Britian enables us to speak with full knowledge of the case, and we affirm that a grosser state of vice, idolatry, cruelty, and lewdness, was never seen in any of the Heathen nations before the coming of Christ. Take the testimony of the learned and accomplished Bishop Heber who not two years since thus wrote "Of all the idolatries I ever read or heard of, the religion of the Hindoos really appears to me the worst, in the degrading notions which it gives of the Deity, in the endless round of its burthensome ceremonies". . ."in the filthy acts of uncleanness and cruelty, not only permitted but enjoined, and inseparably interwoven with those ceremonies."-Let this trait be carefully noted, their religion inculcates, encourages, compels them to vice.-"In the total absence of any popular system of morals, or any single lesson, which the people at large ever hear, to live virtuously, and

(d) Letters in Quarterly Review, No. lxx.

do good one to another."-Let this again be noted. "In general all the sins which a Soodra is taught to fear are, killing a cow, offending a Brahmin, or neglecting one of the many frivolous rites by which their deities are supposed to be conciliated. Accordingly, I really never have met with a race of men whose standard of morality is so low-who feel so little apparent shame in being detected in a falsehood, or so little interest in the sufferings of a neighbor, not being of their own cast or family, whose ordinary and familiar conversation"-mark this, I entreat you-"is so licentious, or, in the wilder and more lawless districts, who shed blood with so little repugnance. The good qualities that are among them, (and thank God there is a great deal of good among them stil!,) are in no instance, that I am aware of, connected with or arising out of their religion; since it is in no instance to good deeds, or virtuous habits of life, that the future rewards in which they believe are promised."

Such is the testimony of an eye-witness, with which all other travellers and writers of credit agree. So that the eloquent and nervous language of a distinguished statesman, in alluding to this subject, is fully supported—" In India we behold all around us smeared with blood and polluted with lust and cruelty, scenes of such detestable barbarity as seem to be intended for the very purpose of displaying the triumph of infidelity over all the instincts of human nature; rendering parents destroyers of their children, and children of their parents: in short, in every way of horror that can be conceived, mocking and rioting in deadly triumph over all the tender feelings of the human heart, and all the convictions of the human understanding."

If from these we turn to the uncivilized nations of Western or Southern Africa, where shall we find the pure and virtuous self-taught people, who exhibit the law of nature in any real force, and demonstrate that revelation has little to teach them? Let any candid person peruse the accounts of the native tribes of Western Africa, from the Senegal to

(e) Mr. Wilberforce, in 1819.

the Congo, or of the Hottentots from the Cape to the Tropic of Capricorn, and say what it is which nature has done for them? Where are the lessons of primitive piety and virtue to be found? Are we to look for them in the frightful idolatries, the Devil's houses, the murder of children and the aged, the indiscriminate intercourse of the sexes, the horrible cannibalism, the total want of any notion of conscience, sin, holiness-of any code of morals or sanction of duty?

Or shall we betake ourselves to any other Heathen nations, the Pagan tribes of the Russian empire, of the North and South Americas, of the vast tracts of China, or the numerous islands of the Pacific Ocean-where, I still ask, is the proof of the innate power of man, without the grace of revelation? Do we not see everywhere the frightful traces of depravity and misery?

And, what adds force to the whole argument, do we not see an uniformity in the vices of all the heathen nations now, with those before the promulgation of Christianity, stamping on fallen man one impress of degradation and woe! Is not the multiplication of deities in India the same as in Rome and Greece? Are not like monstrous and impure fables attached to them? Is not the infanticide of China of a similar character with that of the old world? Is there any essential difference between the detestable practices, the horrid cruelties, the impure rites of heathenism in all ages and places, from the dispersion of mankind to the present hour? In Christian countries, indeed, the God of this world hides his more hideous features, and sceptics frame ingenious theories of religion; but, in pagan lands, he displays his true character, he marks his progress with ferocity and blood, he whitens the plain of Juggernaut with the bones of pilgrims crushed under his car, or lights the lurid flame which consumes the widow on the funeral pile of her husband, or assembles his devotees around the human sacrifice; whilst his mysteries and his morals are frightful for their fierceness, and disgusting for their offences against nature. The offering of animals in sacrifice, the voice of oracles, and the other pretended communications with the Deity,