we have numberless instances of false religions, and forged prophecies, of things long past, and no accredited case of God having conversed with men directly or indirectly. It is also possible that the description of an event might have foregone its occurrence; but this is far from being a legitimate proof of a divine revelation, as many men, not pretending to the charactar of a prophet, have nevertheless, in this sense, prophesied. Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, even by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable prediction: "The despotic government of France is screwed up to the highest pitch; a revolution is fast approaching: that revolution, I am convinced, will be radical and sanguinary." This appeared in the letters of the prophet long before the accomplishment of this wonderful prediction. Now, have these particulars come to pass, or have they not? If they have, how could the Earl have foreknown them without inspiration? If we admit the truth of the Christian religion on testimony such as this, we must admit on the same strength of evidence, that God has affixed the highest rewards to belief, and the eternal tortures of the never-dying worm to disbelief; both of which have been demonstrated to be involuntary. The last proof of the Christian religion depends on the influence of the Holy Ghost. Theologians divide the influence of the Holy Ghost into its ordinary and extraordinary modes of operation. The latter is supposed to be that which inspired the prophets and apostles; and the former to be the grace of God, which summarily makes known the truth of his revelation, to those whose minds are fitted for its reception by a submissive perusal of his word. Persons convinced in this manner, can do any thing but account for their conviction, describe the time at which it happened, or the manner in which it came in upon them. It is supposed to enter the mind by other channels than those of the senses, and therefore professes to be superior to reason founded on their experience. Admitting, however, the usefulness or possibility of a divine relation, unless we demolish the foundations of all human knowledge, it is requisite that our reason should previously demonstrate its genuineness: for, before we extinguish the steady ray of reason and common sense, it is fit that we should discover whether we cannot do without their assistance, whether or no there be any other which may suffice to guide us through the labyrinth of life*: for, if a * See Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, book iv. chap. xix., on Enthusiasm. man is to be inspired upon all occasions, if he is to be sure of a thing because he is sure, if the ordinary operations of the spirit are not to be considered very extraordinary modes of demonstration, if enthusiasm is to usurp the place of proof, and madness that of sanity, all reasoning is superfluous. The Mahometan dies fighting for his prophet, the Indian immolates himself at the chariot wheels of Brahma, the Hottentot worships an insect, the Negro a bunch of feathers, the Mexican sacrifices human victims. Their degree of conviction must certainly be very strong; it cannot arise from conviction, it must from feelings, the reward of their prayers. If each of these should affirm, in opposition to the strongest possible arguments, that inspiration carried internal evidence,I fear their inspired brethren,the orthodox missionaries would be so uncharitable as to pronounce them obstinate. Miracles cannot be received as testimonies of a disputed fact, because all human testimony has ever been insufficient to establish the possibility of miracles. That which is incapable of proof itself, is no proof of any thing else. Prophecy has also been rejected by the test of reason. Those, then, who have been actually inspired, are the only true believers in the Christian religion. Mox numine viso Virginei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater Pectore, qui totum late complectitur orbem. Claudiam, Carmen Paschale.* Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity carry its own infamy and refutation with itself? VIII. PAGE 58. Him, (still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, With self-enshrined eternity, &c. Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas in our mind. Vivid sensation, of either pain or pleasure makes *Upon seeing the Divinity, the Virgin's womb soon swelled, and the unmarried mother was amazed to find herself filled with a mysterious pro geny, and that she was to bring forth to the world her own Creator. A mortal frame veiled the Framer of the Heavens, and he who embraces the wide-surrounding circle of the world, lay himself concealed in the recesses of the womb. the time seem long, as the common phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our ideas. If a mind be conscious of an hundred ideas during one minute by the clock, and of two hundred during another, the latter of the spaces would actually occupy so much greater extent in the mind as two exceed one in quantity. If, therefore, the human mind, by any future improvement of its sensibility, should become conscious of an infinite number of ideas in a minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not hence infer that the actual space between the birth and death of a man will ever be prolonged; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and that the number of ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is indefinite. One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours; another sleeps soundly in his bed: the difference of time perceived by these two persons is immense; one hardly will believe that half an hour has elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his agony. Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dullness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business ;---the other can slumber over the brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise. : Dark flood of time! Roll as listeth thee---I measure not By months or moments thy ambiguous course, And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken That pauses at my feet. The sense of love, The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought Than some grey veterans of the world's cold school, By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. See Godwin's Pol. Jus. vol. i. p. 411; and Condorcet, Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progrès de l'Esprit humain, Epoque ix. VIII. PAGE 59. No longer now He slays the lamb that looks him in the face. I hold that the depravity of the physicial and moral nature of man originated in his unnatural habits of life. The origin of man, like that of the universe, of which he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable mystery. His generations either had a beginning, or they had not. The weight of evidence in favour of each of these suppositions seems tolerably equal; and it is perfectly unimportant to the present argument which is assumed. The language spoken, however, by the mythology of nearly all religions seems to prove, that at some distant period man forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of his being to unnatural appetites. The date of this event seems to have also been that of some great change in the climates of the earth, with which it has an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath of God, and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet. Milton was so well aware of this, that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the consequence of his disobedience. Immediately a place Before his eyes appeared: sad, noisome, dark: And how many thousand more might not be added to this frightful catalogue! The story of Prometheus is one likewise, which, although universally admitted to be allegorical, has never been satisfactorily explained. Prometheus stole fire from heaven, and was chained for this crime to mount Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his liver, that grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says that before the time of Prometheus, mankind were exempt from suffering; that they enjoyed a vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, approached like sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, so general was this opinion, that Horace, a poet of the Augustan age, writes Thus from the sun's ethereal beam When bold Prometheus stole th' enlivening flame, Till then unknown, th' unhappy fraud pursu'd; Francis's Horace, Book i. Ode 3. How plain a language is spoken by all this. Prometheus (who represents the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes; thus inventing an expedient for screening from his disgust the horrors of the shambles. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All vice arose from the ruin of healthful innocence. Tyranny, superstition, commerce, and inequality, were then first known, when reason vainly attempted to guide the wanderings of exacerbated passion. I conclude this part of the subject with an extract from Mr. Newton's Defence of Vegetable Regimen, from whom I have borrowed this interpretation of the fable of Prometheus. "Making allowance for such transpositions of the events of the allegory as time might produce after the important truths were forgotten, which this portion of the ancient mythology was intended to transmit, the drift of the fable seems to be this:-Man at his creation was endowed with the gift of perpetual youth; that is, he was not formed to be a sickly suffering creature, as we now see him, but to enjoy health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom of his parent earth, without disease or pain. Prometheus first taught the |