1367. "The first point relates to the age of the world. For while it has been the usual interpretation of the Mosaic account that the world was brought into existence nearly at the same time with man and the other existing animals, geology throws back its creation to a period indefinitely but immeasurably remote. The question is, not whether man has existed on the globe longer than the common interpretation of Genesis requires,--for here geology and the Bible speak the same language,—but whether the globe itself did not exist long before his creation; that is, long before the six days' work, so definitely described in the Mosaic account? In other words, is not this a case in which the discoveries of science enable us more accurately to understand the Scriptures?

1368. "The introduction of death into the world, and the specific character of that death described in Scripture as the consequence of sin, are the next points where geology touches the subject of religion. Here, too, the general interpretation of Scripture is at variance with the facts of geology, which distinctly testify to the occurrence of death among animals long before the existence of man. Shall geology here, also, be permitted to modify our exposition of the Bible?

1369. "The subject of deluges, and especially that of Noah, will next claim our attention. For though it is now generally agreed that geology cannot detect traces of such a deluge as the Scriptures describe, yet upon some other bearings of that subject it does cast light; and so remarkable is the history of opinions concerning the Noachian deluge, that it could not on that account alone be properly passed in silence."

Our actions dependent, under God, on organization, education, and the extent to which we are tempted extraneously.

1370. “Are not the hairs of your head all numbered?--Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?" Luke xii. 7, 25.

1371. May it not be consistently inquired, who, without God's assistance, can make his passions less ardent? his counteracting reason or conscientiousness more competent to restrain them? Who, prior to his sublunary existence, had the option, whether he should be born a Jew, a Gentile, or a Christian; whether in the Roman, Grecian, Episcopalian, or dissenting churches; whether his progenitors should be Chinese, Hindoos, Europeans, negroes, or savages? Who has, through his own previous choice, been brought up, on the one hand, by ignorant and vicious, or on the other, by virtuous and well-educated, parents? Can any soul be alleged to be responsible for entering the body of an infant begotten by idolaters, and thus subjected to the curse of the commandment? Or can a soul be deemed to have any merit because it came into the world as the progeny of parents orthodox in their own estimation, and happy in the belief that while myriads are to suffer to eternity in another world, for errors or crimes arising from causes beyond their control, a few are to be made eternally

happy, notwithstanding their admitted sinfulness, by virtue of a bigoted confidence in the pre-eminent ability of their parents, their priests, or of themselves to learn tenets of which the great majority of mankind are ignorant? Humility in profession is associated with a towering and overbearing presumption in practice toward all who differ with them in creed: hence an effort to instruct others at the expense of millions spent in missions, while they have no better evidence of the accuracy of their own knowledge than a fallible human conviction.

1372. If two persons, A. and B., were organized exactly alike, educated precisely in the same way, and subjected to the same temptations or incentives, would they not act alike? Would not their acting differently prove that they were not alike in all respects?

1373. It may be said that they are free agents, being endowed with freewill; but if they be perfectly alike and similarly situated, (agreeably to the premises,) their free-will must be perfectly similar; and if not, let it be allowed to be, through God's will, perfectly similar. Is it in their power to alter the nature of their will, any more than "the colour of their hair.” 1374. If any other being act differently from these, does it not follow that he is differently organized, educated, or situated from them; and that the diversity in one or all of these respects must be proportionable to the degree in which his actions and morals differ from those of A. and B.

1375. But it may be inquired, where is the merit of virtue, or the demerit of vice, if they be the consequences of causes over which we have no control? The reply is, that virtue is an endowment due to the will of Deity, just as the difference between the different races of mankind and the various genera of animals, or between individuals of the same species, must be due to that volition. An analogous idea of the necessity of God's help to virtue is insisted upon by some of our most respectable and numerous Christian sects. It places virtue in man, so far as it may exist, upon the same basis as in God. It has always been held by all Christians that God can do no wrong; that vice is inconsistent with his nature. The more, then, a man is by nature and education incapable of being vicious, the greater his natural aptitude for virtue, the more he approaches its most perfect exemplification.

1376. But how can the punishment of the wicked be justified under this view of their case? I answer, that it can only be justified in selfdefence, for the reformation of the offender, or to prevent the repetition of injury where no other means can be employed, just as killing wild beasts, noxious insects, or our enemies in warfare is justified.

1377. Punishment, unless with a view to prevention or reformation, seems to me diabolic. It seems irreconcilable with the injunction to return good for evil, that the Deity from whom it proceeds should return evil for evil, in excess; that he should, for finite and transient sins, award eternal punishment.

1378. The inference that omniscience and omnipotence could create myriads of beings, foreseeing that they must be subjected to extreme misery for an unlimited time, is irreconcilable with all goodness and omniscience. But it may be demanded, does not the fear of future punishment make mankind more virtuous? The man who avoids a felony solely through fear of future punishment is not the less wicked; he is only a more prudent, or a more cowardly villain. That piety to God and philanthropy are virtues, is most evident; but then these incentives must be disinterested. If Abraham could believe that shedding his son's blood upon the altar would gratify the Deity, in order to make it a pious or virtuous act, it should have been unaccompanied by any expectation of benefit to himself. He must have had a conception of the Deity fully as bad as that of any heathen, to suppose that the sacrifice would be agreeable to him.

1379. There is, moreover, much reason to infer that a man who could pass his wife as his sister, and send her to a palace in order to gain influence with a king, did not lose sight of himself when he contemplated killing his son to propitiate the King of kings. But no human testimony should induce us to credit such imputations against Jehovah. Nothing is more probable than that priests should invent this absurd fable, and nothing more improbable than that an omniscient God, who could read Abraham's inmost thoughts, should have found it necessary to ask such a barbarous sacrifice, in order to determine the extent and sincerity of that devotion of which he must have already known the precise limits.

On Probation.

1380. I have already made objections to the idea that we can be placed in this world for the purpose of probation. I will here make use of additional arguments in support of those objections. Spiritualism assumes that we are placed here for progression. It has, in this aspect, a self-evident ascendency over the scriptural doctrine.

1381. A finite being has need to subject his works to trial, in order to learn whether they have the requisite perfection; but how can an omnipotent and omniscient Deity be under any necessity of trying his works? In the first place, they must be precisely what he has designed; in the next place, foreseeing the result of any experiment he may make, he has no motive for the trial. Thus, before placing Adam and Eve in Paradise, God must have known that Adam would be incompetent to resist his wife, his wife the serpent, and that the apple would be eaten. How useless then was the experiment! How can it be reconciled with omniscience and omnipotence? The crime would not have taken place had God made woman less inquisitive; her husband strong enough morally to resist temptation and his wife's seductive influence; or had not the serpent or Satan, under the form of this reptile, been allowed to tempt Eve. And yet in consequence of that act, not only the soul of the first man, but that

of all his posterity, are considered by orthodoxy as having fallen, as being doomed to eternal punishment, unless by being morally regenerated, principally by a blind belief in the allegation of certain priests, who do not agree among themselves as to what we are to believe.

1382. But what had souls unborn to do with the acts of Adam and Eve? Is it conceivable that the soul of the child is begotten by the souls of its parents, or to be inferred that it is a spiritual being, created by God for the body, which the progenitors beget in their corporeal capacity? (See Seneca's opinion, 1230.) How could a dumb snake, belonging to the class of reptiles, very low comparatively in intellectual capacity, acquire power of speech and reason without a special miracle on the part of God, either directly or indirectly through Satan, acting with the cognizance of his divine master. This reptile, previously created without feet, because the devil merely assumed his form, is doomed as a punishment to crawl on his belly, in the only way in which he could move consistently with his organization, independently of the sentence!!! Would it be any greater punishment to cause snakes to creep on their bellies than quadrupeds to go on their feet? Since none of the genera of serpents are endowed with reason or speech, how could they be responsible for the acts of an animal which, being endowed with those attributes, would not belong to their order? It must have been a peculiar reptile, in the form of a snake, created for the special purpose of tempting Eve. If, with Milton, it be assumed that it was Satan, in the form of a serpent, who tempted her? how could serpents be responsible for the crime?

World least moral when the Christian church had most sway.-Honour and mercantile credit more trusted than religion.- Virtue due more to the heart than to sectarianism.-Bigotry acts like an evil spirit. 1383. It will be perceived, that when the church had the world most completely under its sway, there was the least morality; but as the arts and sciences grew up, in despite of religious intolerance, morality improved. Thus a system has been established, which while violating, more especially the most emphatic monitions of Christ, tends to enforce those rules of conduct which are necessary to the welfare of society. But an auxiliary principle-honour-has come into operation, which often restrains those who are not influenced by religion, nor by pure morality. Honour, like the fear of hell, may make a man act more nobly, or more honestly, without improving his religious principles or his heart. Hence the saying, "Honour among thieves," and likewise among unprincipled gamblers.

1384. Mercantile honour, under the name of mercantile credit, is another important substitute for real heartfelt integrity. The ill consequences of a loss of worldly consideration, or of those advantages which result from the ability to borrow, or to postpone payment with consent of the creditor, is a motive for punctual payment, when a debt equally due,

in honesty, would be neglected. This goes much farther as an element of the prevailing morality in securing punctual payment, than religion.

1385. That religion has actually very little to do with mercantile morals, must be evident, since it is never, on change, an object of inquiry. When men are about to trust large sums, they do not inquire how often the other party goes to church, nor to what church he goes. It has never been my lot to know any one whom I thought better for his religion. I have known many whom I thought better through native goodness of heart than they would have been if left to the influence of their bigoted opinions alone. I heard a clergyman, distinguished for his amiability and liberality in social intercourse, speak from the pulpit of infidelity as "the work of the devil."

1386. There are allegations of this kind made from the pulpit which to me appear to be absolutely calumnious, though those who make them do not conceive themselves to be calumniators. It is, in truth, their false religion which speaks; they are possessed as if by an evil spirit, yet the goodness of their hearts prevents them from realizing any such calumnies in their personal intercourse with society. Dr. Berg said it was not he (Dr. Berg) that spoke when he used ill language to Barker, but the Bible. There is a want of Christian moderation in the language of Christ, and John the Baptist, and in some of the Psalms, which seems inconsistent with Christ's precepts. John, addressing the Pharisees as "vipers fleeing from the wrath to come," representing them as poisonous reptiles, and God as enraged against them. The language of Christ respecting some of the same sect, to which allusion has been made, is even more abusive.

1387. But among the calumnies to which I have alluded, are those which represent the human heart as innately wicked, and only to be corrected by religious regeneration. All the souls created since Adam ate the apple, must be born anew, thus drawing a marked distinction between those who have gone through this second birth, and such as myself, who have not undergone this recuperative process. But what man of common sense draws a line between those who are thought to have been born over again, and those who have not? The great majority of those who call themselves Christians, do not put any more trust in one who has gone through this second birth, than in one who is not deemed to have been thus regenerated.

Progress of Literature and Science in Arabia under the Mohammedan Pontiffs, called Caliphs.

1388. While the science and literature of the Roman Empire sank under the influence of the Christian pontiff (pope) into ignorance, superstition, and vice, the Arabians, under the influence of their Mohammedan. pontiffs, (caliphs,) arose from barbarism to a comparatively superior state