are just, as your's at least once were. Fanaticism and Religion have no fellowship, although they are frequently united in the minds and imaginations of men.

The worship of a great and merciful God, the mild and forbearing morality of the Gospel, can never inspire the spirit of persecution. No, it's cruel zeal must be attributed to lamentable self-deceit,—a blind fury, resembling all those wild errors and crimes which dishonour humanity, and to which they are led by the power of ill-regulated passion.

But granting that a weak and perverted sense of Religion has too often given birth to hatred and division, is it's pure spirit (and it is such only. I would speak of), is it's pure spirit to be received with less gratitude, because of the abuses which spring from an erroneous interpretation of it's precepts, or a perversion of it's doctrines?

- Surely common justice would put the negative upon such a conclusion. Intolerant zeal is not, however, the vice of the age; it is an error upon which the progress of our knowledge has had a powerful influence. This, therefore, of all the arguments of the Infidel, appears the most absurd and frivolous.

But in replying to your objections, I have, as usual, been led away from my direct subject:-the influence of Religion upon the happiness of the individual.

I resume,—And surely the faculties with which we are endowed, the consciousness of possessing them, and the liberty of action granted us, are sufficient evidences to intelligent beings, that they are formed to derive their happiness from the thought that they emanate from some great cause, are a part of some grand combination, and continually tend to a superior state of being!

Simple instinct would have enabled us to preserve a perishable frame, but mind seems to connect us with a superior order of beings, and to make us a part of a grand whole. The gifts of nature appear to lead us to Religion, as the means to attain some grand end, by exercising, as it does, the noblest faculties and the sweetest affections.

For, in the midst of all this conscious dignity, we feel our weakness; surrounded as we are by magnificent evidences of power, we feel what atoms we are, and almost instinctively feel the necessity of a strength beyond any thing derived from earth to support us; a rational sentiment seems to urge us to implore this support from that Power whose operations are so visible, and from "nature we ascend to nature's God."

Thus far nature herself seems to guide us, and to elevate our wishes to the Supreme; but

here she leaves us;-she gives us no certain assurances, that those wishes affect the great God of the universe. We see, indeed, every where around us inexhaustible proofs of benevolence, order, and goodness, and we believe, by imitating these perfections, we may please and propitiate the great exemplar of them, and concur, however feebly, in his great designs; and what is yet more grateful to the heart, open a communication with Him, by the homage of gratitude and adoration. Thus does the mind become habitually conversant with the most exalted subjects, and happiness must be the result; as we are raised above the petty disturbances of earthly objects, and earthly vicissitudes.

If such are the benefits of the Religion of nature, how infinitely augmented is every motive, how infinitely increased every blessing, when we acknowledge the Religion of Revelation!-discovering to man the true nature of

his condition, the reason of his situation in the world, and the ultimate end of his being; which at once clears up the perplexities of doubt, and banishes our fears; of which, every precept, in it's natural and ordinary operation, tends to the increase of human happiness. Is there any scheme of morality which can offer what that does? Let any one who doubts it, trace out to our view the ever-varying shades of philosophic infidelity,-from him who rejects his Saviour to him who rejects his God, and point out solid ground whereon we can rest, where we can find quiet and tranquillity (remembering that apathy and obduracy must not be mistaken for them); any to give confidence and animation to the human mind,-any to place ús beyond the tumult of human passions? No: the Infidel knows there is not; but there is a principle in their system that delights in laying waste in the bosom of others that happiness they have rejected from their own; hence the