to be so ancient, that he could not trace the author or origin of it: and that, though cities may be found without bulwarks, without learning, without a king, without public buildings, and without property or a circulating medium of wealth, yet no city, no whole people, could ever be found without some knowledge or profession of God.*

A learned and powerful writer of our own country thus asserts the same thing: "Look through all Greek, Roman, and barbarous antiquity, and it will appear that not one single lawgiver ever found a people, how wild and unimproved soever, without a religion, when he undertook to civilize them. On the contrary, we see them addressing the savage tribes with the credentials of that God, who was there professedly acknowledged and adored. They found religion, and did not make it. +

The atheist, therefore, when discovered to exist, unfortunately, among any peo

*Consol. ad Apollonium.

+ Bishop Warburton's Divine Legation. Book iii.

ple, must be regarded as a solitary instance of unbelief, as a creature of a peculiar kind, either absolutely insane, or compounded of folly and impiety, uttering his blasphemous dogmas in the midst of myriads of intelligent witnesses, all, with one voice, refuting his bold assertions; surrounded by countless works too, in the visible creation, all proclaiming the hand that made them to be divine.

When we see a being of this sort expecting more deference to his individual conclusions, than is paid to those of numberless persons, eminently distinguished by science and learning, is it not as preposterous as if a poor solitary glow-worm fancied its feeble ray of light more resplendent than all the stars of heaven? However he may presume upon his own sagacity, he will not receive the suffrages

of the wise, any more than the approbation of the good. Indeed, the highest of all authorities, alluding to such characters, affirms, that "thinking themselves wise, they became fools:" and it

is a singular coincidence, that, with this opinion, the account given of the human race, by a learned historian, * should perfectly agree. "Not only a belief,” says he, "in the being of a God, (however erroneous in its kind), but also a belief in the doctrine of a resurrection, is discoverable in every tribe throughout the known world, except among those who are sunk so low in the scale of being as to be ignorant of the proper use of their limbs, of the simplest means how to cultivate the earth, or even to defend themselves from danger." How accurately, then, does the Psalmist characterize the wretched creature who is thus degraded by such a fatal species of infidelity, when he says, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

We know that the divine Author of the Gospel assigns another motive for atheism. "Men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Such men hate the light, neither come they to the light, lest their deeds should

* Robertson's History of America.

be reproved." And, coincident with historical proof, both Jesus Christ and the Psalmist come to the same conclusion respecting the motives of an evil-doer and an atheist. Jesus Christ declares, that "they love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil:" and the Psalmist speaks of them as "corrupt and abominable in their doings, neither calling upon God, nor having him in their thoughts."

Fortunate for the world it is, that such characters appear in it so seldom; and that, when they do appear, they are regarded as monsters in human shape, uninfluenced by any moral considerations to restrain them from committing evil!

Such detached and baneful beings do not, therefore, at all affect the great doctrine of a belief in future rewards and punishments. That the persuasion of this doctrine should be so universal, is as much a mystery as the cause or origin of it; and naturally we may suppose that, when darkness fell upon the first

human pair, they might as fearfully apprehend that there would be no return

of light, as when they first witnessed the melancholy change produced by death upon their murdered son, they might conclude, that of the vital spark there would be no restoration.-How far the Deity, by some special token of grace, consoled them with other views, we know not. But it is presumable, that He who comforted them with an assurance of moral restoration, through a Redeemer, would not leave them ignorant of so important a truth.

From no other source, indeed, than from the Fountain of Divine Goodness itself, could the doctrine originally spring; and by no other means than those ordained by Infinite Wisdom, could it obtain so universal a reception. Certain analogies, observable in nature, would, doubtless, serve no less pleasingly than powerfully to illustrate the doctrine: but it is impossible that to them it should owe a derivation. The creeping reptile, which, after a brief term of ignoble ex