did not believe that any Supreme Deity, nor any of the gods who interfered with mundane affairs,— not unfrequently inflicting upon men temporal punishments for their irreligion,-were the authors of future happiness or misery. The regions beyond the grave, they thought, were ruled by gods of their own.

It would be altogether beside the purpose to go into any detail of the chief articles of the popular creed of ancient Italy or Greece. Enough has been said to show what these creeds did not contain: to prove that the God of modern Natural Theology was altogether unknown to that portion at least of the Gentile world. The most enlightened philosophers had but faint notions of the extent of His dominion. He was known to them as the Artificer, but not as the Creator of the world. Many of them believed that He exercised no superintendence over the affairs of men. Even the doctrine of the Unity of the Godhead, contrary as it was to the popular belief, never occupied a prominent place in the exoteric philosophical systems. The world beyond the grave was exempted from God's control. The course of nature, the force of destiny, were not identified with His will. Where the heathens approached nearest to the truth they conjectured, rather than proved; and would have been unable, had they possessed courage to make the attempt, to overthrow the popular mythology. The purest theism of Java dwells in the midst of unsubdued idolatry. Nowhere, but in the writings of some

modern natural theologian, do we find the desired union of just and lofty speculations concerning the nature of the one God, with warm feelings of devotion to Him. Probably philosophy has never yet in one instance, since men "wandered, and lost the light" of Revelation, brought two or three together, to sing praises to the name of the one true God, the Maker of Heaven and earth. We are certain however, upon the authority of St. Paul, that this universal blindness and coldness was "without excuse:" since men were given over to idolatry, because they honoured not, nor were thankful to God, "when they knew Him :" having received this knowledge, it is evidently implied, by tradition from their forefathers. But how far the Christian theologians, who have, (though perhaps with the assistance of that Revelation which they profess to dispense with for a time) demonstrated "His eternal power and Godhead" from a consideration of the things that are made, are justified in adding the doctrine of future states of reward and punishment to their system of theology remains to be considered.

For further observations on the religion of the Gentiles see Appendix.

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CHAPTER III.

ON THE ARGUMENTS FOR IMMORTALity, founded UPON THE SUFFERANCE OF EVIL.

THE

HE lowest form of Natural Religion, if indeed it deserve the name, consists, as has been observed in the preceding chapter, in the dread and the worship of one or more malevolent beings, whose anger is to be disarmed by prayer, and their thirst for destruction appeased by sacrifices. The next step to this, and undoubtedly a most important one, is the recognition of invisible agency of a benevolent character. But from this

point, great diversity of belief has prevailed; the evil and the good, in particular classes of events, ..being sometimes ascribed to one being, who is adverse at one time, and propitious at another, and sometimes ascribed to two beings, one uniformly the friend, the other the enemy, of mankind. A sufficiently extensive generalization conducts on the one hand to a Jupiter, on the other to an Ormusd and Ahriman. A more extensive and accurate examination into the connexion of causes and effects, while it is fatal to both these systems alike, threatens to conduct to difficulties as formidable as any of those which it does away. For let us suppose the great truth fully recognised that the eternal Power and Godhead of one Supreme Being are displayed in all the

things that are made, in all the events which occur upon the earth, without exception-nay, let it be admitted that all those evil accidents which the unreflecting and untutored savage ascribes to the direct agency of malignant spirits, are consequences of general laws, of His appointment, which so far as their operation can be traced, evidently appear to be in the main productive of GOOD-that the winds which purify the atmosphere and moderate the extremes of Wintry cold or Summer heat, are the effect of the same laws which produce the withering sirocco, and the devastating hurricane; that an occasional interception of the solar or lunar beams is a necessary consequence of the essential laws of gravitation and perseverance in motion,-these truths would seem, at first only to render the condition of man more desperate than before. The savage trusted to subdue the violence of the god of storms, the enemy of man, by prayers and offerings,-perhaps by threatenings and promisings; the more civilized worshipper of Jupiter and Neptune hoped, by similar rites, to appease the temporary anger, which, as he imagined, had produced the tempest; but the deist who has considered nature and its Author as far but no farther than has been hitherto supposed, while he derides all such attempts to purchase security, can only recommend in their place a stoical resignation under inevitable and irretrievable calamities, the necessary result of the laws of nature. The further the investigation of the

course of nature, and the relation of causes and effects, is carried, the more forcibly are we im-"pressed with a conviction that THE EVIL WHICH PREVAILS, whether physical or moral, IS INEX

TRICABLY ENTANGLED WITH THE GOOD, AND CANNOT BE ERADICATED without a subversion of the whole. The wheat is mingled with tares; the seeds were sown and the plants must grow together; and our hopes, if any we venture to entertain, must regard the harvest time, when the husbandman who planted the one, and suffered the other to grow, shall separate them finally. Unless the progress of years should at length bring about such a consummation, we may be certain that the field of the world will never present a different scene from that which it now presents, of mingled good and evil.

But here we are immediately pressed by a great difficulty. According to the parable to which reference has just been made, after the good seed had been sown by the husbandman, "while men slept his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat;" and these having been once sown, were of necessity suffered to remain. But, to confine our attention at present to external nature, the evil does not seem to have been originally separate from the good; and even if it were, we cannot conceive it to have been inserted, like the tares, without the knowledge of Him who sowed the good seed. We are informed indeed by Revelation, that the world is not as originally constituted; but that