governed when I feel that I am so.' This disciple had been taught to believe, that part of his well-doing consisted in observing a certain number of ablutions daily; the performance of those rites with a due reverence, made a part of his conscience under our second division: had he omitted such on any day, he would have laid any unlucky casualty which might have befallen him, to the score of such impious inadvertence. And so, many a luckless wight has verily believed, that misfortune or bodily accident has been solely the result of his profanation of the Sabbath; that, had it been Monday instead of Sunday, he would not have contrived to pitch, dead-drunk, out of his vehicle, because he could not keep his centre of gravity.

"Oh Man, Man! How thou art hoaxed, and gulled! Thou art, when bereft of the reason and common sense which goodness gave, an ass most veritable: thine ears do elongate, and flap in the gust of folly, most similar to the listeners of that same quadruped; though of late they are become less pendulous, more pricked forward to the cry of Nature, thy grandam.

"Thou wilt do well to keep them in elevation above the side-winds and trade-winds of artifice.

LETTER XXVI.

"been much con

"IT has," continued L troverted, whether or not man has a sufficient source of light, of rectitude, given to him by the revelation of Nature; by the springs of internal movement which excite him to action. The agitation, the abusive spirit of party generated by this query, have been and continue to be immense: to this day, the population of the civilized, the reflecting part of mankind, is convulsed by the debate. As to the uncivilized, it enters not into their calculations; they do not dream of troubling themselves about the matter. The special revelationists, so far from settling this contest of opinion, by what they received as a declaration from on high, which should decide the point in issue, are occupied in soundly abusing each other, because of their differences as to the mode in which the gift operates on the mind, its primitive causes, its effects patent and latent. In this delightful work, the officiating ministers abstain from whetting the sword, which is a dangerous office, and therefore to

be exercised by deputy, as some others are; and although they hate this life, they have nevertheless a special regard to the safety of their own carcases; but they make amends for apparent lukewarmness, by nibbing their pens to a point most acrimonious; which, if ever I take up the cudgels, shall be the very thing I would not do. For my own part, how any one in his sober senses, unbiassed by preconceived prejudice, can imagine for any long time together that man does not possess in his own materials and immateriality, a full capability of enjoying in his own person and of imparting to his kind, all the knowledge and derivative felicity of which his organization is susceptible, I am as yet at a loss to tell.

"The first objection which always has been, and is urged against this position, is, 'then, why has he been so slow in attaining that eminence of knowledge to which we are obliged to confess he has at last arrived? And why do the greater part of his species still remain in the grossest intellectual darkness, in depraved ignorance of their own natural scale, which you so highly extol?' I answer to these momentous questions; it might be pleaded, as a 'set off" to the demand, as our legal phrase is, why is not special revelation by this time considerably more advanced than we see it to

be? Why does it incessantly lose at one end as fast as it gains ground at the other? Why has one revelation, alleged to be supported by the accomplishment of phrophecy and miracle, been succeeded by another, and the second by a third,and so in succession, from time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, 'each of whose believers have invariably supported the pretensions of their own faith to exclusive efficacious divinity, in derogation of all others, without a single exception?' I could with much propriety urge all this as the retort courteous, but will not do so; because, as I have told you before, I would fain avoid the charge of impertinence: moreover, I am convinced such discussion would be worse than useless; it would not extend the real interests of truth, and might soon descend to the elegant vituperation which all sectaries heap on each other without mercy, under the appellations of defence of faith,'-'cautions against infidelity,'-'exposure of heretical defamers,' and many other titles too numerous to mention here.

"Among many of the true reasons of these admitted facts, one of the most efficient I take to be, the tyrannical sway which one man has assumed over the mental capability of another, so soon as the first was by any means cunning enough to perceive the vast power

that his superior attainments, whether resulting from natural energy or from studious research, gave him over those who were still his inferiors in this respect." Certainly, however, this reasoning applies only to those communities whose members have made some progress in obtaining more than mere intuitive preception. As to the great remnant in pristine barbarity, still consisting of the inhabitants of the fairest and most extensive regions of the earth, I can only urge in extenuation of the foolishness of my ideas on the sufficiency of natural capability, that man is confessedly a free agent, created in possession of certain powers derived from a source superior to himself: the unseen, unknown agency, which gave him being, has as it were, said 'work of my will, I have given you existence for my good pleasure; I grant to you perceptive faculties, of a scope which will enable you to reject the evil and to choose the good, so long as you exercise those gifts in the native purity which I have infused. I veil myself in mystery no deeper than seems befitting to me, who am all goodness, power, and knowledge. I reveal myself in my works, to your outward senses in a thousand modes: I declare my attributes to your internal conviction, by the voice of conscience, by the emotions of parental and