your study of the works of that God, who gave you such opportunities of meditating on him and them during your mortal being here. Farewell. - that in the support of the Established Church of Great Britain and Ireland, not less, perhaps, than twelve millions sterling are annually expended that large voluntary contributions, amounting to some hundred thousand pounds every year, are raised for Missionary, Bible, and other societies, besides the great expenditure required for the support of teachers of independent sects; that the steeple alone of a church will sometimes cost more than would found a university, is it not somewhat remarkable that nothing is done to give mankind some knowledge of God, as he exhibits himself in his works? I am perfectly satisfied of two things;—that such knowledge must be useful to mankind, not only in enlarging their minds, but in greatly increasing their morality; and also that, however much natural religion may be cultivated, it can never lead to any injurious excesses of enthusiasm, nor render its cultivators bad or dangerous members of society. It never can induce any man, or body of men, to compass the life of a human being for a difference of opinion. There can be no quarrelling about what can be made obvious to all; and I presume that any one would be laughed at,-I am sure he would deserve it, at least, who would assert that the pursuit of nature and natural religion can ever lead to cruelty, oppression, lying, burning, hanging, flogging, or flaying. No murders, you may depend upon it, ever have been, or ever will be, committed for its sake; and it never can give rise to attempts at glorifying God by acts of injustice, bloodshed, and murder. Now, if there be an intellectual pursuit adapted in its very nature, its very essence, to the capacities of all mankind, and all times of life, whose natural tendency is to soften and humanise the dispositions, to keep up a constant reverence for the God of all, by suggesting that Great Being in every thing cognisable by the senses, ought it to be neglected?-a pursuit which leads us to discover the all powerful Creator in the endless multitude of his works, is it to be spurned from us and contemned? or should we not rather exert our best efforts to remove the cloud that is settled so deep and wide upon it; to disperse the darkness, and open up, for the amelioration of our species, opportunities of advancing in its delightful paths to a knowledge of nature, and, through her, of the Almighty God whose glorious work she is? In the observations I have all along made respecting natural history, you will recollect that I have not spoken so much in its favour as I have done from any bigoted attachment or |