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Him; the certainty of His forgiveness of any and of all offences against either Himself, the supreme Lawgiver, or any of our fellow-subjects, on confession and repentance, and, when possible, restitution; and the probability (in your opinion, certainty) of a future life, to give these truths effect. In brief, you tell me that these truths, not to be received simply into the understanding as a mere creed, but to be practical over the whole life of man, as habitual principles of action, - constitute the sum of any rational religious system. Now this system is, in effect (as you confess), identical with that of Lord Herbert, — given to the world two centuries and more ago. You seem also to think, with him, that these principles are the undoubted dictates of man's religious nature "innate in Lord Herbert's vocabulary, intuitional in yours; and if not uttered prior to all instruction, yet universally developed, as the mind itself developes, under the action of the ordinary stimulants of the religious faculty, and needing no special Divine intervention either to elicit them or to give them authority; that these principles, the various religious systems which have prevailed in the world, have more or less distinctly recognised, and have contributed to extricate more or less successfully. You further think that Christianity was the most effectual attempt, till then made, at the complete extrication of these truths; that it may have been a necessary stage" in the transition from the more imperfect forms of religion, but that now it is necessary no longer; that the beautiful structure of a "rational" religion, being happily complete, the scaffolding may be thrown down! This seems, in brief, to be your view.

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And so, I suppose, the little flower-pot of the Gospel, and all the other little flower-pots of other religions, in which the oakseedling was planted, being but crockery ware, have yielded to the expansive power of the Divine vegetation, have been shivered to pieces, and may now be thrown away; that as the "law" is said by the "imaginative" Paul to be a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, so Christianity was a schoolmaster to bring us to Lord Herbert!-though how it should need Lord Herbert, or anybody else, to teach any man truths which every man intuitively knows,

passes my comprehension; or, if any such teacher is needed, whether may we not need a better?

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How many questions might I ask, naturally suggested by such a theory! I might ask you how it came to pass that truths, which you say are the natural dictates of the human mind, came to be so slowly extricated, and to be even now, by the majority of mankind, so obscurely apprehended; I might ask you how so many of them came to be, and still are, so constantly disputed, doubted, denied, perverted; I might ask how it was that the infinitely different and grotesque systems of religion which have prevailed in the world, being themselves the product of man's religious nature, have exhibited, instead of a bright reflection and image of these "intuitional truths," the grossest caricature of them. I might ask you how it is that those "historical" and "traditional" religions, to which you so conveniently attribute man's tardy recognition of these truths, could ever have originated on such a theory as yours; since the said religions, pernicious as they may be, are nothing external to man; they are his own work; he has created he has wrought them; though, on your theory, the glorious intuitions of which you speak, and which, amid the infinite load of lies and fables, are native still to the human heart, must have stared him in the face the while! I might ask you how it is, that even in the best of these fabrications, religion of Moses and the religion of Christ, so great a knack of corrupting rather than of improving them, so that Judaism became buried in Rabbinism, and Christianity in Popery. I might ask you how it is that, when these truths were presented to him, he has not been able even to conserve them, but has deliberately stifled them in a mass of ridiculous fables and superstitions, for which he is not only willing to vouch, but to die? I might ask you how it was that the abuses of "historical religion" began, that those pernicious customs and practices were sanctioned, by the intervention of which you account for the dimming of man's internal light? how he came to originate them? If, as some of your wise men of Gotham say, man began upon all fours, as the very lowest savage, and gradually improved

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himself into a very gross idolater, I might ask, in that case, how his internal light could well have been dimmed, and how I am to reconcile the fact with the universal possession of your intuitional truths which need no revelation? or whether, if we had seen the aboriginal savage mopping and mowing, and adoring his newcreated Deity in the form of a bright stone or a cockle shell -we could imagine him to be illuminated with your internal light? I might ask, if he was so illuminated, how it was that his spiritual faculty did not prevent him from thus playing the fool? — though, perhaps it may be said that the unutterable debasement in which he was created, - how the Divine benevolence is to be acquitted is quite another question, fairly put his "intuitions" to flight, as indeed such a night of tempest as that in which he is supposed to have been born might well have extinguished even a brighter flame than that of his little flickering lamp! If this theory be rejected (as I think you will not accept it), then I might ask how it was that man's originally bright intuitional candle came to burn dim and to want snuffing? How it was that coming fresh from his Creator's hand and just fitted up with his spiritual apparatus, he did not, however slowly, develope in the order of his faculties, but brutishly turned a deaf ear to them, and fell, and still falls, under the dominion of lie and fable; — that the first act of this perverse dolt should be to kneel down to stocks and stones ;- -that he should be, in such infinite ways, and for such weary ages, such a fool and madman? And lastly, I might surely ask how it is that when "in these last days," the Truth which is so perfectly "congruous," is at length extricated, perverse man is so reluctant to receive it that, since Lord Herbert's days, those who have acquiesced in his theory may be reckoned by units, and those who have doubted or rejected it in favour of historical religions, or none, by millions; or how it is that amongst those who have, with him and you, rejected Christianity, scarcely half a dozen together receive this system, which is so perfectly "congruous to man's nature," eternally; about the existence of God Himself; about His unity and personality; His nature and perfections; about the relations

but dispute about it

of man to Him; about man's responsibility, destinies, immortality! I might ask . . . . but there is no end to the questions that might be asked; and as I fear there would be little chance of getting an answer, I will ask none of them.

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To content yourself with affirming that you intuitively know all the truths you make the sum of your theology, that they are all self-evident, would be, in the face of the entire religious history of man, of the inconceivably tardy process by which your little system has been developed, the infinitesimal part of mankind that has yet been brought to acquiesce in it, the infinite disputes about its parts among the few who do,-something perfectly preposterous. I conceive, therefore, you cannot be too grateful to me for waiving all the above questions.

Neither will it suffice to tell me that some questions of similar nature can be addressed to me respecting Christianity; F answer, Not so. You may say, That too has been tardily embraced, — has been disputed about,-has been corrupted. I answer, Yes; and naturally, for it proceeds upon just the contrary hypothesis to yours; it assumes that man was incapable of adequately extricating religious truth that he was "wandering from the way," and needed to be set right; that he was corrupt, and required to be reformed; that he "loved darkness rather than light," and therefore recoiled from the light. All this is natural on the hypothesis of Christianity. But the questions I ask of you are unanswerable on yours.

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You must not, therefore, be surprised when you speak so confidently of your religious system, that men should ask you many such troublesome questions as I have indicated.

But from me fear nothing. I will act on the compact I have made with you, and shall not trouble you with controversy. Neither shall I even taunt you with the inconceivable difficulty with which man seems to be got to embrace any such system as yours. I shall charitably suppose that some mysterious obstacles have hitherto stood in the way of man's "natural reception" of perfectly "natural truth" when propounded to him ;— though I confess it seems to me, on your theory, as wonderful as that a

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hungry man should refuse bread, or a thirsty man water. ever, I will suppose, for your benefit and that of the world, that now, at least, the truth has been fully developed, and that it is destined to go on, as you say, "conquering and to conquer." The next thing is to ask, how it shall be made triumphant? My notions of what will need to be done I will give you in another letter or two.

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You cannot but see, I think, the immense advantage which the dominant religions of the earth, as Mahometanism, Hindooism, Christianity, have enjoyed from the possession of "Books," the Koran, the Vedas, the Bible,-in which their doctrines are not only solemnly and permanently recorded, but embodied in forms more or less fitted to impress the fancy and excite emotion. The first suggestion, therefore, which I would offer to you and your co-religionists is just to compile a "Bible" of your own; a book that shall exactly mirror, neither more nor less, the religious truth which, as some of you say, is intuitively known to each man, and which the rest of you admit is, at all events, instantly recognised on presentation to the mind. If the former theory be true, you may think you ought to be exempted from any such task, as a work of supererogation. That conclusion, however, would be rash and unwise; since we see, in fact, the use of external instruments in the disengagement even of our most elementary cognitions and certainly in all cases, the value of such aid in making Truth more vivid, in giving it the empire of

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