Also every animated being has its sensorium; that is, a certain portion of space, within which perception and volition are exerted. This sphere may be enlarged to an indefinite extent; may comprehend the universe; and being so imagined, may serve to furnish us with as good a notion, as we are capable of forming, of the immensity of the Divine Nature, that is, of a Being infinite as well in essence as in power, yet nevertheless a person.

The inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and in some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its

use.

Nor can I perceive that it varies at all the inference, whetner the question arise concerning a human agent, or concerning an agent of a different species, or an agent possessing, in some respects, a different nature.

Whatever includes marks of contrivance, whatever in its constitution, testifies design, necessarily carries us to something beyond itself, to some other being, to a designer prior to, and out of, itself. No animal, for instance, can have contrived its own limbs and senses; can have been the author to itself of the design with which they were constructed. That supposition involves all the absurdity of self-creation, that is, of acting without existing.-Paley's Natural Theology.

[We will endeavour to place in a clearer light and develope the consequences of the foregoing argument.

According to Paley, God is a person, possessing a sensorium; endowed with powers adapted to a particular end-that of creating the universe.

The adaptation of the watch to certain purposes, proves contrivance; contrivance proves the existence of a watchmaker: the adaptation of the watchmaker, man, to certain ends, proves the existence of his creator: and the yet more complete adaptation of the Creator of man to the purposes of his existence, equally proves design, contrivance, and a contriver; for to suppose that the man-maker made himself, "involves all the absurdity of self-creation, that is, acting without existing."

Paley's person with a sensorium, therefore, cannot be the ETERNAL GOD; since, as he further says, "nothing can be God which is ordered by a wisdom and a will which itself is void of; which is indebted for any of its properties to contrivance from without.

Nothing contrived can, in a strict and proper sense, be eternal, forasmuch as the contriver must have existed before the contrivance:" And himself have needed a contriver.

What is the result of the argument?]

ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS.

THE first men, the children of nature, whose consciousness was anterior to experience, and who brought no preconceived knowledge into the world with them, were born without any ideas of those articles of faith which are the result of learned contention; of those religious rites which had relation to arts and practices not yet in existence; of those precepts which suppose the passions already developed; of those laws which have reference to a language and a social order hereafter to be produced; of that God whose attributes are abstractions of the knowledge of nature, and the idea of whose conduct is suggested by the experience of a despotic government; in fine, of that soul and those spiritual existences which are said not to be the object of the senses, but which, however, we must for ever have remained unacquainted with, if our senses had not introduced them to us. Previously to arriving at these

* Sensorium. That part of the brain, where the nerves, from the organs of all the scnses, terminate.

notions, an immense catalogue of existing facts must have been observed. Man, originally savage, must have learned from repeated trials the use of his organs. Successive generations must have invented and refined upon the means of subsistence; and the understanding, at liberty to disengage itself from the wants of nature, must have risen to the complicated art of comparing ideas, digesting reasonings, and seizing upon abstract similitudes.

It was not till after having snrmounted those obstacles, and run a long career in the night of history, that man, reflecting on his state, began to perceive his subjection to forces superior to his own and independent of his will. The sun gave him light and warmth, fire burned, thunder terrified, the winds buffeted, water overwhelmed him; all the various natural existences acted upon him in a manner not to be resisted. For a long time an automaton, he remained passive, without inquiring into the cause of this action; but the very moment he was desirous of accounting to himself for it, astonishment seized his mind; and, passing from the surprise of a first thought to the reverie of curiosity, he formed a chain of reasoning.

At first, considering only the action of the elements upon him, he inferred relatively to himself, an idea of weakness, of subjection, and relatively to them, an idea of power, of domination: and this idea was the primitive and fundamental type of all his conceptions of the divinity.

The action of the natural existences, in the second place, excited in him sensations of pleasure or pain, of good or evil; by virtue of his organization, he conceived love or aversion for them, he desired or dreaded their presence: and fear or hope was the principle of every idea of religion.

Afterwards, judging every thing by comparison, and remarking in those beings a motion spontaneous like his own, he supposed there to be a will, an intelligence inherent in that motion, of a nature similar to what existed in himself; and hence, by way of inference, he started a fresh argument. Having experienced that certain modes of behaviour towards his fellowcreatures wrought a change in their affections and governed their conduct, he applied those practices to the powerful beings of the universe. "When my fellow-creature of superior strength," said he to himself, "is disposed to injure me, I humble myself before him, and my prayer has the art of appeasing him. I will pray to the powerful beings that strike me. I will supplicate the faculties of the winds, the planets, the waters, and they will hear me. I will conjure them to avert the calamities, and to grant me the blessings which are at their disposal. My tears will move, my offerings propitiate them, and I shall enjoy complete felicity."

And, simple in the infancy of his reason, man spoke to the sun and the moon, he animated with his understanding and his passions the great agents of nature; he thought by vain sounds and useless practices to change their inflexible laws. Fatal error! He desired that the water should ascend, the mountains be removed, the stone mount in the air; and substituting a fantastic for a real world, he constituted for himself beings of opinion, to the terror of his mind and the torment of his race.

Thus the ideas of God and religion sprung, like all others, from physical objects, and were in the understanding of man, the produce of his sensations, his wants, the circumstances of his life, and the progressive state of his knowledge.

As these ideas had natural beings for their first models, it hence resulted that the divinity was originally as various and manifold as the forms under which he seemed to act; each being was a power, a genius; and the first men found the universe crowded with innumerable Gods.

In like manner the ideas of the divinity having had for motors the affections of the human heart, they underwent an order of division calculated from the sentiments of pain and pleasure, of love and hatred: the powers of nature, the Gods, the genii, were classed into benign and maleficent, into good and evil ones and this constitutes the universality of these two ideas in every system of religion.

These ideas, analogous to the condition of their inventors, were for a long time confused and gross. Wandering in woods, beset with wants, destitute of resources, men in their savage state had no leisure to make comparisons and draw conclusions. Suffering more ills than they tasted enjoyments, their most habitual sentiment was fear, their theology terror, their worship confined to certain modes of salutation, of offerings which they presented to beings whom they supposed to be ferocious and greedy like themselves. In their state of equality and independence, no one took upon him the office of mediator with Gods as insubordinate and poor as himself. No one having any superfluity to dispose of, there existed no parasite under the name of priest, nor tribute under the name of victim, nor empire under the name of altar; their dogma and morality, jumbled together, were only self-preservation; and their religion, an arbitrary idea without influence on the mutual relations existing between men, was but a vain homage paid to the visible powers of nature. Such was the first and necessary origin of every idea of the divinity. Volney's Ruins.

REVELATIONS OF TRUTH.

CHAP. VI.

THERE are many evils, but one is greater than all, because that in the power of its protection the lesser abide, and flourish, and are shielded from correction. And I beheld that there was no belief in the all-pervading Love; no trust in the almighty power of Truth; no worship of the Beautiful; no faith, nor hope, nor desire.

Superstition, born of Ignorance, sitteth like an incubus upon the dreaming soul of man.

That which men call Religion is a mercenary Thing, the child of Tyranny, the twin-brother of Commerce: a Curse which is bought and sold.

It defendeth the injustice of oppression, bidding the weak to debase themselves and crouch before the strong.

It chaineth Inquiry; it veileth the light of Truth; it crippleth the march of Knowledge; it crusheth the generosity of Love: it would stay improvement, and keep man a grovelling slave to pander to its inordinate lusts.

It standeth between God and man; it throweth its shadow over the garden of Life; and in the stagnant darkness the flowers wither, and there remaineth but a waste of sickly weeds.

That which is Religion may not be bought for money; that which is Religion needeth not that any should be set apart to preserve it: Religion is not a manner; it is not a form of prayer which can never avail to alter the determination of the Most Highest, of praise which evaporateth into an idle repetition of unfelt words.

IT IS AN IN-DWELLING APPRECIATION OF THE INFINITE BEAUTY : a far-shining and influential goodness; an all-embracing Love, unresting and never-tired.

What do ye with a priesthood? Hath not the poet, the philosopher, the philanthropist shame that these names should designate the exceptioned few!-a holier consecration? Who knoweth more of God; who shall teach us better?

What do ye with a priesthood? Hath not every man a mission to comfort, to instruct, and to assist humanity?

Nearly two thousand years ago came One who, though no priest, yet taught to the people the religion of Love; who, denying priest-craft, sent forth a few fishermen to preach peace and minister to all.

They had no priesthood, no separate interest, no tithes, no profit of their preaching, making no trade of Love; they neither warred in the field, nor wrangled in the courts of law; they had no traffic, nor usury, nor theft.

They appointed stewards to provide for the sick and needy, the helpless and aged, but they established no priesthood, nor did the Christ: the legends of "the Fathers" are tales of "the dark ages" and lying chronicles.

They cannot teach the doctrine of Love, whose selfishness or weakness asketh a price for that which may not be purchased: he, who demandeth hire, hath no divine authority to lead.

Read ye the history of Priestcraft! It hath ever been the same; the enemy of improvement, the friend of oppression; crafty, intolerant, barren of good, greedy, and cruel: it will ever remain so till, in the light of the Religion of Love and Reason, it shall melt away, merged and counteracted in the general duties of humanity.

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NATURE OF BELIEF.

WHEN a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently prevent this perception from being immediate; these the mind attempts to remove, in order that the perception may be distinct. The mind is active in the investigation, in order to perfect the state of perception of the relation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to each, which is passive: the investigation being confused with the perception, has induced many falsely to imagine that the mind is active in belief, that belief is an act of volition,-in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, continuing this mistake, they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief; of which in its nature, it is incapable: it is equally incapable of merit.

Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like every other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement.

The degrees of excitement are three.

The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind; consequently their evidence claims the strongest assent.

The decision of the mind, founded upon our own experience derived from these sources, claims the next degree.

The experience of others, which addresses itself to the former one, occupies the lowest degree.

(A graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities of propositions to approach to the test of the senses, would be a just barometer of the belief which ought to be attached to them.)

Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason; eason is founded on the evidence of our senses.

Every proof may be referred to one of these three divisions.

Shelley.

Philosophical Spirit. And thus have I declared my private and probable conceptions in the enquiry of this truth; but the certainty hereof let the Arithmetic of the last day determine; and therefore expect no further belief than probability and reason induce; only desire men would not swallow dubiosities for certainties, and receive as principles, points mainly controvertible, for we are to adhere to things doubtful in a dubious and opinative way; it being reasonable for every man to vary his opinion according to the variance of his reason, and to affirm one day what he denied another, wherein although at last we miss of truth, we die notwithstanding in harmless and inoffensive errors, because we adhere unto that whereunto the examining of our reasons and honest enquiries induce us.-Sir Thomas Browne.

Feb. 9, 1839.