thence, you are certain, would arise a good go vernment. Yet you cannot have forgotten, how universally it has been found, that neither the one nor the other can be well established, but by the very means of religion. To say differently, in truth, would be to run counter to all the legislators, both ancient and modern, to all the sages of antiquity, and to all the unequivocal opinions of the most enlightened of mankind. But, let me ask you, what education would you have men receive, when you have banished Christianity? Or are you to have good education and morality, entirely without a religion?

Bayle long ago started the question, whether a people might not be happy in society, and be qualified for good government, upon principles of morality singly, without any sense of religion? And the question was ingenious, for it gives opportunity for subtility in reasoning; though it is, at the same time, I conceive unquestionably useless, because the fact supposed cannot happen. The principles of morality and of religion are equally rooted in our nature. They are, indeed, weak in children and in savages; but they grow up together, and advance towards maturity with equal steps. Wherever, therefore, the moral sense is in perfection, a sense

of

of religion cannot be wanting; and if a man, who has no sense of religion, live decently in society, he is, I must believe, much more indebted for his conduct to good temper, than to sound morals.*

The many must be led, for the many cannot guide themselves. Individuals, no doubt, without the influence of religion, have been found equitable, charitable, and good. But the mass of mankind are not actuated either by kindness, by temperance, or by forbearance. Abstract notions of right and wrong, or logical deductions from ethical principles are, by them as little understood, as the separation of the rays of light, or the phænomena of electricity and magnetism. To suppose otherwise, would be to manifest no small degree of ignorance of the human character.

Philosophy, in its most happy conclusions then, teaches us only to believe, what Christianity, in its tenets, plainly inculcates, and modestly would entice us to regard in practice. A religion, consequently, so assorted, and so qualified, either for the apprehension of the uninstructed, as a matter of faith, or for the con

* Lord Kaim.

viction

viction of the instructed, as a principle of de monstration, surely cannot but have merit. The two most unobjectionable characteristics are, moreover, strikingly attached to it. It is that alone which is conformable to reason; and it is that alone, which is allowed to have been revealed.

Locke, I know, declares the gospel to contain so perfect a body of ethics, that reason may be excused from the enquiry; since she may find man's duty clearer and easier in revelation than in herself. This, however, may be more implicit than I would recommend your's, or any other thinking man's faith to be. There is no occasion to banish reason, though there may be occasion to suppress licentiousness. At the same time, independent of its own internal evidence, and independent of the strength which the acquiescence of the wisest and the best of men, for so many centuries, hath unquestionably given to it, there is still one other consideration, and it is solely to be found in Christianity, which has always, I confess, impressed conviction on my mind, and that is, the comfort which a man, firm in his religion, whatever be his circumstances, is always certain to find in the ob servance of its precepts.

The

The hour of sickness, the hour of misfortune, the hour of dissolution, falls to the lot of all. On any of these trying occasions, did you ever perceive the atheist derive ease or consolation from the vast expansion of his unbelief? On the contrary, have you not witnessed instances, where the bitterness, of sorrow, the agony of disease, and the approach of death, have been met with the most pious resignation, with a cheerfulness, if I may say so, of submission, springing from that consolation in hope, which Christianity alone is capable of affording? This is, indeed, unfashionable language; and some may even of an incorrect statement of facts. For though it cannot be denied, that Voltaire, for instance, died unbecoming the intrepidity of his doctrines; yet, did not Mr. Hume and the King of Prussia, it will be asked, die with infinite composure and indifference? Yet, what I have advanced is nevertheless true. And I would dare the boldest anti-Christian that ever lived to say whether he has not frequently been convinced of the serenity, and superior firmness, with which a truly devout Christian may be enabled to struggle with the casualties of existence.

accuse me

The

The great leading truths of the gospel have, at all times, a natural tendency to give us honourable and amiable ideas of God; to excite our hopes; to awaken our dormant virtues; and thence to promote universal obedience and universal happiness. The very standard, by which the superior excellence of the Christian religion is to be estimated, is its coincidence with the true ends of civil society. The sight of an altar, erected to God and truth, speaks to the hearts

of all. Guilt shudders at the recollection of a Divinity, who regards with the same eye the powerful and the persecuted. The oppressed lifts his head, and, in brighter prospects, finds a balm for immediate affliction. In a word, religion binds us to our God, as its precepts bind us to our neighbour.

To talk of death, and to die, are things widely different. No freethinker ever saw the near approach of death unappalled. He, who is unprepared for the enemy, has always just cause for apprehension. Yet, though death be terrible to natural attachments, and to natural desires, yet, seen with the eye of faith, he is disrobed of these terrors, and is, in fact, no longer. formidable. "Blessed are the dead which die

in