IV. It is also at first a matter of some wonder to us, LETTER that when the communication of so grand a truth as the Creation of Nature had been made to Man, it should not have been afterwards the perpetual companion of the human intellect. It might have been so if Man had been but one vast being, that had never died, but had continued in existence from his creation to this moment; but every man's individual ideas and knowlege die with him out of this world, and new beings arise, who have to acquire every thing afresh. Every human mind is born as naturally ignorant of God as it is naturally ignorant of every thing else. It is without knowlege of Him as it is without any knowlege of all material nature, or even of itself. It has to attain whatever it is to possess. It has no sensations until other things cause these to accrue to it. Whatever his predecessors may have heard or discovered, each individual has to acquire for himself all the opinions and belief, which he may afterwards possess, just as if he had been the first human being that had come on the earth. Our personal mind remains without Grecians' world, and his own Roman countrymen, had set up as gods. "The virtues and vices, men and animals, things the most indecent, of all shapes, colors and ages, marriages, adulteries, quarrels and hatreds; among these, some winged, some lame, some coming out of eggs, and even deities of robberies and crimes:' he truly characterizes such things as 'puerilium deliramentorum.' Nat. Hist. l. ii. c. 5. • Without suitable instruction, most minds would feel or answer like the untutored Esquimaux. Mr. West says, that when among them, 'The sun was then shining in his glory, and the scenery in the full tide of the water before us, was striking and beautiful. I asked them, if they knew who made the heavens and the earth, and all that surrounded us? Their reply was, 'We do not know whether the person who made these things is dead or alive.' Mr. West's first Journal, p. 177. F IV. LETTER any of the ideas which are familiar to others, until it thus learns them from what can impart them. Each of us has, therefore, had to obtain for himself the knowlege that there is such a wondrous being as the Almighty God, and that all things are His creation. This will not of itself fly into the mind like a bird to its tree. We may have sensibilities that are ready to lead us to Him, but these are vague emotions, unintelligible to the mind that feels them, until definite information gives them meaning and application. The numerous nations who have not such knowlege, but who have become the prey of base superstitions instead, or who are living vacantly, without any hope or perception on this subject, experimentally prove this fact. Whatever we have to know, we have to learn, whether it be religion, chemistry or the mathematics. Every babe in its cradle must be, at that period, without the knowlege of the gracious Power who has caused and superintends it, and so must remain, until some kind friend or parent leads it by degrees to that idea and belief, which its intellectual sensibilities are formed to receive and cherish as 8 There are several of these still in the world. Thus Mr. West found among the North American Indians whom he visited, that tho they admitted and addressed the Great Spirit, yet their general idea is, that they are more immediately under the influence of a powerful EVIL SPIRIT. Their trials, sufferings, afflictions and death, make them think so; and therefore their prayers are directed to him, when any severe calamity befalls them. To avert his displeasure, they often use superstitious practices, with the most childish credulity. They will drum and dance a whole night, in the hope of bringing relief to the sick and dying.' West's first Journal, p. 135. Pythagoras connected the earth with his demon principle, as mentioned before in Note 1. IV. soon as they are fitly taught." If it be left desti- LETTER tute of the instruction, it will grow up without it; in this respect it must then be like the animals in the field, or by its fireside, as ignorant of the Divine Author as of its future destiny. From the want of this tuition, the greatest blessing which one being can confer upon another, how many, even in our days, have minds on this point no farther advanced than the most stupid savage of Australia, or the fetish-governed negro; and if the absence were to become national, and to remain so, new insanities of Paganism would soon appear, and the human mind be either demonized or stultified, and again enslaved by depraved and infelicitating superstitions. Recent experience justifies this conclusion.10 It was for this reason that the Jewish legislator so earnestly inculcated, "Hear! O Israel! The Lord thy God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul. These words shall be in thy heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house; and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.' Deut. c. vi. v. 5-7; again, c. xi. v. 19. 10 An instance of this occurred at Paris in November 1793. On the 7th, the Bishop of Paris and his Grand Vicars went in form with red caps to the National Convention, and renounced their priesthood and christianity; three other Bishops, several Catholic clergy, and two Protestant ministers did the same, which many others soon imitated. Three days afterwards, the constituted authorities of Paris proclaimed a festival to the Goddess of Reason and Truth; and a young woman, arrayed as such, and seated in a chair, ornamented with festoons of leaves, was brought in procession to the Convention, and seated opposite the President; she received their acclamations, and then, placing herself by his side, he welcomed her with the fraternal embrace, while a chorus of youths sang the hymn to Reason, which had been composed for the occasion. The Convention was invited to assist at the feast of Reason in her own temple, and went accordingly to it. This was a temporary building raised in the Cathedral of Paris, with an altar, before which the female sat as goddess, with a large torch F 2 LETTER IV. It is indeed a remarkable truth, that the soul cannot rest satisfied without believing in something supernatural. Hence Hence many of those who deny a Deity, have betrayed impressions of this sort: this fact shews, how much the human spirit is formed to receive and cherish the Divine sensibilities; but still it must be taught to combine with these the right conceptions, or it will not possess them." For these reasons it is obvious, that the first Theism of every new generation, would depend on the instructions it individually received from those among whom it came; and wherever the due knowlege was not effectually inculcated, folly and falsehood would torch blazing over her, as the Torch of Truth. Public homage was paid her by the crowded populace. Public Journals of Nov. 1793, and Moniteur. Robespierre, who censured this as atheistical, yet being equally adverse to Christianity, in the following June had what he called a fête to the Supreme Being, in which he acted as high priest. His plan was also to make the Virtues objects of veneration, by having festival days appointed for them; these, if he had lived, would have brought back the Roman 'fides, pudicitia, concordia, spes et clementia,' as subjects of public worship, which Pliny mentions, sneering at such divinities. Nat. Hist. 1. ii. c. 5. "In Thiebault's Original Anecdotes of Frederick II., among those who frequented this King's palace, it is mentioned that La Metherie, the apostle of universal materialism, makes the sign of a cross when it thunders. Maupertuis, who does not believe in God, yet says his prayers every evening on his knees. D'Argens, a still firmer infidel, shudders if he counts thirteen persons sitting round a table. The Princess Amelia, the king's favorite sister, almost as much a philosopher and endowed with an intellect almost as strong as his own, is the dupe of fortune-tellers. Half of Frederic's court believe the story that a woman in white appears in the palace sweeping one of its when some one of the royal family is to die that year.' rooms, Mr. Leigh Hunt mentions of Lord Byron, that he believed in the ill luck of Fridays, and was seriously disconcerted if any thing was to be done on that frightful day of the week. The idea of a supernatural fate over-ruling men appears in the writings of many German unbelievers; and the savage nations who have no notion of a Deity, yet believe in witchcraft, charms, and obys. A large list might be made of the superstitions of the anti-religionists, in all ages and countries. IV. prevail instead. As the right education declined, LETTER and the inventions of Paganism arose, these became the adopted tenets of the neglected spirit; and thus a hopeless Atheism would have now been the universal governor of the human mind, if the Jewish and Christian revelations had not rescued human nature from such deterioration and unhappiness." The belief in the creation of the world by an intelligent Maker, has been chiefly upheld by these venerated documents; and altho the belief has now become so naturalized in human nature, and associated with so much of our science and literature, that our knowlege and libraries must be extinguished before it can again be obliterated, yet the generality of the impression, and the heart's attachment to it, will always most. abound where the sacred writings are most diffused and studied. Philosophy does not adequately feel, how much of all that is most valued by the enlightened, the 12 The influence of these is interestingly shewn in the address of the Creek Indians to the President of the United States, on the intended unjust removal of the remains of their nation out of Georgia, 'the land of their fathers.' Unless the missionaries had been among them, they could not have used language like this in 1825, tho they might have had some less definite feelings of the same sort: - We, the sons of the forest, have agreed to address you in the language of the living. Who placed in our delicious climate those lofty mountains, and planted the stately forests, which shelter our babes and our game? Who sends His rain and sunshine to fertilize our lands? Who distributes the flowing rivers that lead us to the sea of the mighty waters? The ETERNAL and BENIGN SPIRIT, that walks on the face of the deep. He has placed us here. He gave us these lands as our inheritance; and that we might not be disturbed, he placed the whites in Europe. Offend Him not; for, when it is His pleasure, His mighty power shakes the mountains, as the wind shakes a leaf. His lightning blasts the stately forest. His thunder and His storms show the dreadful power of the Great Spirit.' British Press, 28th July 1825. |