parted the great truths of religion and duty to the progenitors of the human race; and that these, disfigured more or less by the corruptions and idolatries of subsequent generations, as they removed from the first settlements, and forgot their early instructions, constitute the basis of what we now dignify with the name of natural religion; and they refer to the ignorance, barbarism, cruelty, and profligacy of nations among whom all traces of natural religion have vanished. But let us grant, in due extent, that the invisible things of God from the creation of the world may be, and are clearly seen [or inferred], being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead (godship, Oɛórns), Rom. i. 20; and that the Gentiles, which have not the law (the only revealed law), may do, and actually do, by nature, the things contained in the law, and become a law unto themselves, their consciences and thoughts accusing or excusing (Rom. ii. 14, 15); yet, left to themselves, with so bare an outline, so meagre a shadow of religious knowledge, as that there is a great designing Power, and that, in some way or other, it is wrong to oppose his moral government; after

was substituted; and that is it which St. Paul concludes to be the rule of the heathens, and by which they are hereafter to be judged. If my supposition be true, then the consequence I have assumed in my poem may be also true, viz. that deism, or the principles of natural worship, are only the faint remnants or dying flames of revealed religion in the posterity of Noah; and that our modern philosophers, nay, and some of our philosophising divines, have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that by their force mankind has been able to find out that there is one supreme agent or intellectual being which we call God, that praise and prayer are his true worship, and the rest of those deducements which, I am confident, are the remote effects of revelation. So that we have not lifted up ourselves to God by the weak pinions of our reason: he has been pleased to descend to us; and what Socrates said of him, what Plato writ, and the rest of the heathen philosophers of several nations, is all no more than the twilight of revelation, after the sun of it was set in the race of Noah."

Nothing has been yet said respecting the way in which a sinful being shall obtain pardon—a frail being help in obedience—a blind creature knowledge of Divine truths-an afflicted creature solid consolation-a dying being hope of immortality. All these are difficulties in the way of natural theology. As to prayer, it is scoffed at as an insult to his omniscience, by informing him of what he knows; and to his goodness, by asking what, if he be good, he would give without our asking.

all, how little that is really essential can they know, and how great and manifold must be their difficulties!

I. Who, or what, or where, is this God? What is his nature? Is he a personal being? Is he the soul of the world? If so, how is the body of the world, the insensible, material part of this universal frame, to be accounted for? Will it be said that God created matter? Natural religion answers, Ex nihilo nihil fit. Will it be said that matter exists eternally, and independently of God? Then God is not omnipotent; his attributes are limited by some co-eternal power. Or, once more, is it urged that matter is part of God? that the universe is God-a vast living all, whose body nature is, and MIND its soul?

Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris.-Lucret.

Or, in the language of another poet, that God is no more than the Spirit who

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees.

If thus sun, stars, breeze, and trees, are all important parts of Deity, it must follow that every thing is God—that the most wicked wretch on earth is part of God: and what becomes of conscience? or where is my accountability? or the difference between a saint and a sinner?

The personality of God compared with his omnipresence, and the triune nature of God, are difficulties in revealed religion; but they are only difficulties arising from our present want of comprehension.

II. The next difficulty in natural religion relates to the origin of evil. If God be perfect goodness, can evil emanate from him? Why did he permit it to exist? Shall we become disciples of Zerdusht, and say there are two co-equal powers, one good and one evil, from all eternity contending against each other? Such is the puzzle of natural theology. Here revealed religion has no difficulty: I CREATE EVIL, saith the Lord; and it is created as a trial for his rational probationary creatures, that they may rise to a more exalted state in his universe, by a struggle in which their better, and by him invigorated energies shall conquer.

III. Another difficulty of natural religion relates to particular providence. It can see that the universe is governed by wise and uniform laws: the fixed stars are immoveable from age to age; the planets roll and return, one after another; one generation hath produced its kind, by a mysterious adaptation of the male to the female, throughout all the ranks of organised beings: and even inanimate matter is subservient to the purposes of life; vegetables and animals have a wonderful conformity in organisation and nutriment, and are nicely adapted and proportioned to each other. But do not all things seem to proceed by great laws laid down, from which there is not a possibility of swerving? Does not the Maker and Lawgiver seem as if he left the things thus generally arranged to take their own course? Why are so many animals formed to be the food of others, and all of them that of man, in preparation for whose meals they undergo much fear and pain? Whence comes the tempest, the plague, the conflagration, which sweeps masses of people away, without regard to their individual vice or virtue? Does not every thing appear as if God, in his general providence, had as much of terror and cruelty as of mildness and beneficence? and as if, in regard to particular providence, he preserved the species, and neglected the individual?

Revealed religion is here satisfied with the information, that not a sparrow shall fall to the ground without the knowledge, permission, and order of God; and that every man shall give an account of himself to God. And when reason is considered as the handmaid of revealed religion, it sees that nothing can happen in the universe without the cognisance of God; and that he would not be God, if he had not, even in the slightest matters, an omnipresent inspection, or if any secret were hidden from his omniscience.

IV. If difficulties hang upon revealed religion, in regard to the reconcilement of foreknowledge and free-will, they equally encumber natural religion. We know, we feel we are free and responsible agents; and yet an omniscient God — the Creator, and Preserver, and Governor of this universe, eternal and mysteriously great — is not throwing dice with chance or fate: he must know all things, past, present, and to come.

V. The last difficulty I shall mention in natural religion relates to the immortality of the soul. And here a previous question is to be disposed of, viz. Has man a soul? Is he any thing more than organised body, animated by the air or breath of life? a superior animal, whose advantages can be traced to the form, and substance, and development of his brain and nerves, the form of his hand, his power of speech, his talent of writing, and his consequent capability of transmitting his knowledge from sire to son, as the basis of progressive improvement?

Many of the arguments used by natural religion in favour of a future state-the shortness of life, the pains here endured, the indiscriminate visitations of evil, and present ignorance,-would be conclusive for the future life, consciousness, and individuality, not of man only, but likewise of every one of the ten millions of animals we destroy in drinking a glass of water. Indeed, Pope asked, "Where would be the harm if the animals had another conscious life?" And Wesley and others could only reconcile their suffering here for the sin of man, to the goodness of God, by allowing them a compensation in futurity. If we doubt this, on the score of their numbers and insignificance, let us ask--why were they created once?

But what are the farther doubts of natural religion?

1. I had no conscious existence before my birth; and analogy leads me to conclude that my consciousness will utterly cease at the separation of my breath and body.

2. The body is all by which I know the man, and that at death is buried in the grave, soon to be blended with the dust. How can I know that the living principle may not be the breath which is absorbed in the ocean of the atmosphere, and thus lost for ever.

3. All men die-that is clear; but no man-to natural religion-has ever returned.

4. The brutes perish utterly; and why should not man?

.

5. When persons are recovered from drowning, or from swoons, they bring no secrets from the other world along with them. Their breath of life has been drawn back just in time; a few moments longer, and they would have been annihilated. Had the soul no glimpse of its new being? Is not its entire

oblivion in the swoon an intimation that all is darkness, and that there are no secrets to communicate?

6. Could not all the functions of what we call the soul be accounted for on materialist principles, a finer organisation only being given?

These are all difficulties of natural religion. Revealed religion is delivered from them all in the words, - Fear not them which kill the body, but him who can destroy both the body AND the soul, Matt. x. 28; Christ the first fruits of the grave, afterwards they that are Christ's at his coming.

The only difficulty in revealed religion is that of believing in the authenticity of those records wherein its truths are announced. Now, the probability that God would reveal his will to a being thus blind and ignorant-the antiquity and preservation of the sacred writings - their consistence in one plan throughout so many ages -- their indirect support derived from collateral history, language, customs-one part of them being in the custody of enemies to the other, which yet fulfils and tallies with the former - the internal purity of their morals and tendency and the adaptation of the great doctrines to the wants of men, do altogether make up a body of irrefragable evidence in favour of the truth of revelation.

65. IIρoσýλUTOs, proselytes of the temple, and proselytes of the gate.

Προσήλυτος is derived from πρός and the obsolete verb ἐλεύθω, and literally signifies "a person coming from one religion to another." Under the Old Testament dispensation a stranger was so called who came to dwell among the Jews, and embraced their religion by submitting to the rite of circumcision, with all the males of his house, Exod. xii. 48, 49, Levit. xvii. 10, Num. ix. 14. He was then admitted to the passover, and, following all the Mosaic ordinances, was called a proselyte of the temple, or of justice. Women became proselytes by baptism and sacrifice. The Hebrew words and are used in the same sense.

The proselytes of the gate, or of habitation, are those who, without submitting to circumcision, or obliging themselves to the legal ceremonies, worshipped the one true God, and bound