STUDY FOURTH.

REPLIES TO THE OBJECTIONS AGAINST PROVIDENCE.

UCH are the principal objections which have been

raised in almost every Age against a Providence, and which no one will accuse me of having stated too feebly. Before I attempt a refutation of them, I must be permitted to make a few reflections on the persons who maintain them.

Did these murmurings proceed from some wretched mariners, exposed at sea to all the revolutions of the Atmosphere, or from some oppressed peasant, labouring under the contempt of that society whom his labour is feeding, my astonishment would be less. But our Atheists are for the most part well sheltered from the injuries of the Elements, and especially those of Fortune. The greatest part of them have never so much as travelled. As to the ills of Civil Society, they most unreasonably complain; for they enjoy it's sweetest and most respectful homage, after having burst asunder all it's bands, by the propaga tion of their opinions. What have they not written on Friendship, on Love, on Patriotism, and on all the Fuman Affections, which they have reduced to the leyl of those of beasts, while some of them could I 4 render

render human affection almost divine by the sublimity of their talents!

Are they not in part the very persons to whom many of our calamities may be justly imputed, for their flattering in a thousand different ways the passions of our modern tyrants, whilst a cross rising in the midst of a desert comforts the miserable? It is a matter of no small difficulty to retain these last in a rational devotion; and it is a moral phenomenon which appeared to me for a long time inexplicable, to behold in every Age atheism springing up among men who have most reason to cry up the goodness of Nature, and superstition among those who have the justest ground of complaint against her. It is amidst the luxury of Greece and Rome, in the bosom of the wealth of Indostan, of the pomp of Persia, of the vo luptuousness of China, of the overflowing abundance of European Capitals, that men first started up who dared to deny the existence of a DEITY. On the con. trary, the houseless Tartars, the Savages of America, continually pressed with famine; the Negroes, without foresight, and without a police; the inhabitants of the rude climates of the North, such as the Laplanders, the Greenlanders, the Esquimaux, see Gods every where, even in a flint, in a pebble.

I long thought that atheism, in the rich and luxurious was a dictate of conscience. "I am rich, and I "am a knave," must be their reasoning, "therefore "there is no GOD." "Besides, if there is a "GOD, I have an account to render." But thes reasonings, though natural, are not general. Thee

Are

are atheists, who possess legitimate fortunes, and use them morally well, at least externally. Besides, for the contrary reason, the poor man ought to argue thus: "I am industrious, honest, and miserable ; "therefore there must be no Providence." But in Nature herself we must look for the source of this ratiocination.

In all countries the poor rise early, labour the ground, live in the open air, and in the fields. They are penetrated with that active power of Nature which fills the Universe. But their reason sinking under the pressure of calamity, and distracted by their daily occasions, is unable to support it's lustre. It stops short, without generalizing, at the sensible ef fects of this invisible cause. They believe, from a sentiment natural to weak minds, that the objects of their religious worship will be at their disposal, in proportion as they are within their reach. Hence it is that the devotions of the common people in every country are presented in the fields, and have natural objects for their centre. It always attracts the religion of the peasantry. A hermitage on the side of a mountain, a chapel at the source of a stream, a good image of the Virgin in wood niched in the trunk of an oak, or under the foliage of a hawthorn, have to them a much more powerful attraction than the gilded altars of our Cathedrals. I except those, however, whom the love of money has completely debauched, for such persons must have saints of silver, even in the country.

The principal religious acts of the people in Turkey, in Persia, in the Indies, and in China, are pil

grimages

grimages in the fields. The rich, on the contrary, prevented in all their wants and wishes by men, no longer look up to GOD for any thing. Their whole life is passed within doors, where they see only the productions of human industry, lustres, wax candles, mirrors, secretaries, parasites, books, wits. They come insensibly to lose sight of Nature; whose productions are besides almost always exhibited to them disfigured or out of season, and always as an effect of the art of their gardeners or artisans.

They fail not likewise to interpret her sublime operations, by the mechanism of the arts most familiar to them. Hence so many systems, which easily enable you to guess at the occupation of their authors. Epicurus, exhausted by voluptuousness, framed his world and his atoms, with which Providence has nothing to do, out of his own apathy; the Geometrician forms it with his compasses; the Chymist compounds it of salts; the Mineralist extracts it from the fire; and they who apply themselves to nothing, and these are not few in number, suppose it like themselves in a state of chaos, and moving at random.

Thus the corruption of the heart is the original source of our errors. Afterwards, the Sciences employing, in the investigation of natural things, definitions, principles, methods, invested with a great geometrical apparatus, seem by this pretended order to reduce to order what widely deviates from it. But supposing this order to exist, such as they present it to us, of what use could it be to Man? Would it be sufficient to restrain and to console the miserable ; and what interest will they take in that of a society

which tramples them under foot, when they have nothing to hope from that of Nature, who abandons them to the laws of motion?

I now proceed to answer one after another the objections formerly stated against Providence, found. ed on the disorders of the globe; of vegetables, of ́animals, of Man, and on the nature of God himself.

Replies to the Objections against Providence, founded on the Disorders of the Globe.

Though my ignorance of the means employed by Nature in the government of the World is greater than I am able to express; it is sufficient, however, to throw one's eyes on a geographical chart, and to have read a little, to be enabled to demonstrate that those by which her operations are pretendedly explained to us have no foundation in truth. From human insufficiency spring the objections levelled at the divine Providence.

First, it appears to me no more natural to compose the uniform motion of the Earth through the Heavens, of the two motions of projection and attraction, than to attribute to similar causes that of a man walking on the Earth. The centrifugal and centripetal forces seem to me no more to exist in the Heavens, than the two circles denominated the Equator and the Zodiac. However ingenious these hypotheses may be, they are only scaffoldings imagined by men of genius for rearing the fabric of Science, but which no more assist us in penetrating into the Sanctuary of Nature, than those employed in the construction of our churches can introduce us