Divine interferences, lead us to feel strongly that the maintenance of Christianity, as to its human support, has rested and still rests principally on the British populations, and that they are the present agents and instruments used and directed to preserve and diffuse it. Others may deem religion necessary for its state benefits; but a political patronage of it,-without the sincere belief, would not long perpetuate it.t

These circumstances illustrate to us the state and action of the human mind in the anterior ages, when it separated itself from its Creator, and invented and adopted its paganisms instead; the same disinclination to any specific Divine revelation and the depreciation or rejection of what has been delivered. Thus the primitive descendants of Noah soon put aside what had been communicated to him and his family, as millions now dislike and relinquish the sacred records which we possess. The principle seems to be the same in both cases. When the atheist or skeptic abandons and expunges from his mind the real God, or disbelieves his existence, then man becomes in his conception, and would so be if his theory were true, the greatest known being in the universe. Man then stands at the head of nature instead of God: and from this feeling, the Buddhist system gives him this superiority to all the divinities which others are worhsipping.‡ Another

* Yet it is conceded that America equals, if she does not surpass, all other nations in missionary effort.-Am. Ed.

† At some moments Napoleon felt that an actual religion was expressly wanted by mankind for its moral utilities -something more than theoretical deism. On 4th June, 1800, just before the battle of Marengo, he wrote from Milan to his two consular colleagues at Paris-'Let the atheists of Paris say what they please, I shall attend to-morrow the performance of the "Te Deum," in the cathedral.' He went to it in great state, and the next day he summoned the parochial clergy of Milan, and told them that he would protect the Roman Catholic religion; adding 'In any state of society, no inau can be virtuous and equitable without know. ing whence he comes and whither he is to go. Mere reason cannot fix our ideas on the subject. Without religion we must be groping continually in the dark. There can be no good morality without religion. A society without religion is exposed to all the shocks of the most violent passions, and falls a prey to the internal discord which must infallibly produce its ruin.'"-Thibaudeau's Consulat, vol. i., Pieces Justif.

The Sanscrit professor, Mr. Wilson, in his lecture on Buddhism to the Ashmolean Society at Oxford, remarked, that the Buddhist priests inculcated the belief in the superior nature of man, made perfect even to that of the gods, and on this account they neglected and depreciated the Braminical divinities. Their great figure in all their worship was Buddha, the author of their system, who is still revered in China, Japan, Aya, Siam, Thibet, and Tartary. Mr. Hodgson, in his paper on Bud

principle equally operates. Revelations from the supreme require us to form and regulate our mind and conduct according to their disclosures, counsels, and precepts. But to such control and government the great majority of mankind have been in every age repugnant; and as by disbelief they get rid of their idea of the obligation, their desire of the independence, and of acting as they please, is a strong inducement to discredit what they dislike. Even theism has the same tendency from similar impressions; for it is obvious, that if no system has been specially revealed and enjoined, all religious ideas and practice, and moral self-regulations must, like the pagan idols and worship, be the mere matters of individual judgment, liking, fancy, choice, and speculation, none of more authority than another, and those of others never preferred by any one to his own.

All these facts and views confirm the impression, that, as far as the human mind alone has acted and would operate, paganism, atheism, and a disbelief of specific revelations have been and would continue to be the exclusive possessors of the social world, and that nothing but Divine interference and agency has rescued mankind from them. This happy result has been effected by that peculiar process which the Divine wisdom has devised and kept in operation; and to the consideration of that we will now direct our next attention.

LETTER XXXVIII.

The Divine Process for the complete Formation of Mankind a prospective and progressive one, foreseen and settled at the Creation to be so. -Their Nature made to be improvable with this View.-The Improvements it had always to acquire.

MY DEAR SON,

The leading feature of the process which has been adopted by the Deity in his intellectual agency and revelations has been their PROGRESSIVE nature, working out good in every

dhism in Nepaul, read to the Royal Asiatic Society, described it to be "in a few words, monastic asceticism in morals and philosophic skepticism in religion."

VOL. III.-LL

generation, but producing larger and richer effects in each series of the evolving ages; and operating onward to a grand or ulterior completion, which has not yet been attained; but to which it is steadily advancing human nature and the final population of our globe.

That a progressive course of improvement has been pursued with mankind, we perceive by what has actually occurred. On looking back to the earliest ages of society, and on contrasting these with the world now around us, and by studying the state of the intermediate periods, we see that there has been a gradationary improvement, a successive progression of human nature in all things, from the deluge to our present day. It is most palpable to the common eye in our sciences, our manufactures, our general knowledge, and our multifarious literature. On these there can be no doubt or mistake. Compare Egypt and Phoenicia with Greece-Greece with the Roman empire in its most advanced state-all these nations with our own country and Europe as the sixteenth century closed; and our predecessors all over the world at that time with what we and the country around us now are: compare all these successively with each other, and the progressive series will be as clearly visible to us as the succession of the dawn, the morning, and noontide is to our bodily eye, in every day that occurs to us.

The progression is not less manifest in religion and gov. ernment-in legislation and morals, and in all the conveniences of life-in taste, judgment, polity, and philosophy-in civilization and refinement of mind, in manners, in elegance, in courtesy, in philanthropy, in general civilization, and in individual benevolence. The more minute and extended our knowledge becomes, both of past nations and of our contemporaries, the more clearly we shall discern the improvements which have been effectuating in human nature, and also the fact that they have been gradually attained; gradual both in the successive acquisitions, and also in the diffusion of them among the various and multiplying populations of the globe. Every individual is in himself a progressive being of this sort, and is, in his own personal experience, an illustration of the progressive advancement of his nature, in the series of the generations which have preceded him, and in the separate nations by which he is surrounded.

What has taken place in himself has taken place in his

species at large, so that I consider no fact as more certain in the history of our world than this progressive advance of human nature to its present enlarged and meliorated condition. It is also as manifest that this improving process has not stopped, but is still going on in an accelerated ratio, and with results more rapidly evolving than earth has hitherto beheld. What has been discovered in the Egyptian paintings is no exception to these remarks: they show us the degree of civilization which the renewed world revived from its antediluvian reminiscences. What Egypt had soon passed into Greece, and was there enlarged. That this progression was foreseen by our Creator, and intended by him to take place, and was a part of his original plan of our being, is not only to be inferred from the fact of its occurrence and from his admitted omniscience, but it likewise rests still more satisfactorily on his own revelation of the fact. Our Saviour has declared, that his future kingdom of heavenly felicity was put into preparation at the foundation of the world. His apostles mentioned that the scheme of our redemption was the mystery planned before mankind were created.* Our Lord's advent upon earth was alluded to in the Divine address to Abraham, and in the prediction which the dying Jacob was inspired to utter. The last periods of our human world are expressly delineated by both Isaiah and Daniel, and also noticed and sketched by others of the prophets, and in some of the psalms. These circumstances show that the plans and process of the Deity in the formation of human nature have been prospective and progressive from its commencement; their appointed ends have been designed to be those which would not be accomplished till the latter periods of the human world. These predicted results have not yet been fully attained; but several of the intervening, and immediate, and conducive effects have been brought about.

We have, therefore, sufficient evidence to warrant the assertion, that the formation of human nature to its intended completion and final excellence has been foreseen, and intended to be a progressive and successively enlarging and enriching improvement. The plans and process of the Deity with

* These passages were quoted and referred to in the eighth letter of the second volume of this history, p. 109. They occur in Matt. xxv., v. 34; 1 Cor. ii., v. 7; Rom. xvi., v. 25; Eph. iii., v. 9; 1 Tim. i., v. 9; Eph. i., v. 4, 11; Titus i., v. 2; St. Peter I., c. i., v., 20.

respect to it must, therefore, be of a progressive nature, and with a gradual operation; producing such immediate results from time to time as were meant in each generation to follow from them; but acting steadily onward, to effectuate their grander purposes and more perfect creations.

We are living now in the thirty-eighth century of the operation of this process, or nearly so; and in what the world now is collectively as a whole, and most strikingly in some of its most prominent countries, we see the admirable effects which have thus far been produced; and we are enabled to discern that others far more brilliant and ennobling are coming into birth, and will be the possession and inheritance of our yet distant posterity.

From this contemplation of what has been designed and of what has been effected, and of what is still pursuing by that Divine agency which alone can accomplish the purposes of Divine foresight, let us now advance to a further consideration of the course and principles by and on which what has been done has been effectuated.

If the human mind has been thus improved, man has been and is an improvable being. Improvability must then be a quality of his essential nature, and he has been created to be of this character. He has not been created a perfect being at his first creation, but as a being that was to become such at a future period, and to be continually advancing to it, by a progressive series of moral meliorations and mental enlargements, until his nature should at last attain the assigned completion. If man had been created to be perfect at the time of his creation, there could have been no subsequent improvement, and no reason for it; nor could he have been improvable. All change of what is complete could only be for the worse. He would, if he had ever been in a fullformed state, have been definitely what he was at once, and so have remained for ever. From that condition he neither could nor would have advanced or altered. But it is manifest that he has been and is an altering being; and therefore he was never intended to be such a fixed and completed being at the commencement of his existence, and has not yet be come of this final and stable character.

The very system of his birth precludes the possibility of such perfection. What Adam was we do not distinctly know, though we may assume that he was as complete and perfect