and his creature's shame. Insanity and idocy, only, should be excused for charging God with having -wrought a fallacy, or committed a mistake. No! that which is untrue in Nature, a God can never have adopted, nor inculcated. The foregoing, therefore, are human fallacies; anatomical, physiological and metaphysical errors, of which the Clergy, from igncrance or prejudice, or both, continue to be madly tenacious, in spite of reiterated confutation: And in the very language, that science has long since rendered nugatory, they pretend to philosophize and instruct an illiterate laity, whose stupidity fattens upon their theological and metaphysical stultiloquence.

And here, you will permit me to give a brief recapitulation of my sentiments relative to that most stupid of all serious questions, viz., that of moral culpability for mere abstract opinion; which is, metaphysically interpreted, a state of mind either favorable, or unfa vorable, to whatever suggestion or proposition it shall have been presented with the former constituting belief, the latter unbelief. If, therefore, a person cannot institute an opinion antecedently to suggestive circumstances, and even contrary to their natural tendencies, it is clear, that belief and unbelief, in all possible cases, are irresistibly forced upon him; and hence the charge of moral or religious responsibility must be entirely nugatory.

The mind, as has been already said, is dormant during the absence of excitation; nor can opinion be ever formed without a presentation to the mind, of more or less of those circumstances, which have ac

quired the name of evidence. As well might mathematics be instituted without numbers, or geometry without figure. Hence, if opinion, or belief and disbelief cannot occur, in the absence of what the mind recognizes as testimony, which would be equivalent to an opinion without an object, it must depend, incontrovertibly, and exclusively, upon circumstances, over which the mind possesses no modifying control. Responsibility, therefore, for the formation, or possession, of opinion, is one of the senseless dogmas of illiterate superstition; of which it is disgraceful to acknowledge, that it is, yet, to be exploded: For, if it is culpable, in any case, to have acquired an erroneous belief, a single exception to the rule is altogether inadmissible; and hence culpability must be as certainly, if not as momentously, involved in an erroneous opinion of astronomy, or chemistry, as of theology or morality. And who, allow me to ask, is so unreasonable, as to reproach a cobbler, with his ignorance of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia; or a back-woods log-roller, with that of Sir Humphrey Davy's, or Justus Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry; of which, in all probability, neither has ever heard? Yet, if the scriptures are literally true, an erroneous opinion of the personality, or divinity of Jesus Christ, which, by the by, stands upon the same foundation as any other, is to be visited with the amazingly disproportioned penalty of eternal damnation. And, most certainly, if belief can be instituted without apparent evidence, it can be so, in, direct opposition to it. And, hence, a Lazarus might have sanely believed, that he

was snugly deposited in Abraham's bosom. Nor, upon this principle, would the literal incarnation of. the spirit of evil find the least inconvenience in believing himself, to be the immaculate Son of God. And so Napoleon might, if he would, have believed his ruinous defeat at Waterloo a splendid victory; and that his murderously unexampled retreat from Moscow, and his exiles to Ella, and St. Helena, as so many magnificent triumphs.

1

Now, religious infidelity consists, in fact, of a disbelief of these and similar contemptible absurdities, which Theology has arbitrarily and successfully imposed upon mankind: Nor does it involve the slightest distrust of a single truth in Nature. It frankly admits all the testimony afforded by Nature, and all the inductions Reason has been able to draw therefrom, in favor of the existence of a God, which it is, however, entirely unable to distinguish from the idea of ultimate causality, whereat every continuous in-. quiry must finally terminate; and at which every series of phenomena must have commenced...

Religious faith, on the contrary, appears to have nothing to do with Nature, or with any of her palpa- ~ ble realities; but professes to spurn them, as objects entirely unworthy of its exalted contemplation! It constitutes one of the three rundles of the ladder, upon which a fictitious Spiritualism anticipates its ascent to a fictitious Paradise. And yet, so inconsistent are spiritualists, that while they decry the world and the flesh, as being too uncleanly for the residence and habitation of their sanctified souls, they are often

found so firmly clinched to its veriest corruptions, that Death itself can scarcely unloose their gripe! (Yes, while they are importuning you to relinquish your attachment to "the things of time and sense”. for a more exalted devotion to God and spiritualism, they are doubtless sometimes, much more seriously. devising some artful plan, to circumvent a neighbor in a bargain, and thereby transfer, unpaid for, another's property to themselves: Nor is it dealing unfairly with spiritualists, an occasional, magnanimous exception having been admitted, to say that, while they point with one hand toward an imaginary heaven, they are literally committing felony with the other. Such is the apparent practical result of both Theism and Tri-theism, notwithstanding they assume to have been instituted and patronized of God; sustained by miracles; and verified by martyrdom; and all, especially, for man's regeneracy, from a state of nature, to a state of grace!

And, in the face of all this palpable invalidation, the religious Fanatic, nevertheless, believes all truth, superior to that which ministers to the welfare of the beast, to be safely wrapped up within the folds of a stultifying and maddening spiritualism! Wherefore then, I boldly ask, should the slightest blush suffuse the cheek of him, who is peevishly taunted with his infidelity? Should he not rather glory in his, little less than miraculous, emancipation from the intellectual thraldom to which his race has so long, tamely and shamefully submitted? And let me indulge the hope, that your affirmative assent is unembarrassed by a momentary doubt!

1

THE CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE OBJECTS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH CONTINUED.

Scepticism has been constantly, and, doubtless, with no little propriety, taunted with its ignorance of both, the letter and spirit of those scriptures it would, as is said, ruinously, if not maliciously, invalidate. But admitting the justice of the general charge, that sceptics are poorly read, in, both, the scriptures and their voluminous, elaborate commentaries; the rule has, nevertheless, been interrupted by frequent individual exceptions, wherein may have been found enough of biblical erudition to have done credit to the cowl or suplice-to pope or bishop. (And yet the general reading of those scriptures, superficial as it may have been, has, doubtless, engendered and nourished the present luxuriant Infidelity that threatens, ere long, to supersede the superstitions of Christianity; and that, without detracting from its ethical, and only, truth: Therefore, whilst the Christian solicits attention to the Scriptures, as an infallible mean of instituting and confirming spiritual faith, the scep