prayer, the Christian to the east, the Ethiopian to the north, and the Japanese to the west; the atheist turns to no part of the compass-seeing that he never prays, and has no God to pray to. In life, where is his hope? In misfortune, where is his consolation? In the hour of death, where is his cynosure? In ancient times the amethyst was supposed to be an antidote to inebriation; but to an atheistical soberness of heart, there is no resource from mental ruin.

We cannot conceive what is infinitely great, nor what is infinitely small; and yet atheists will, in solemn complacency, contemplate their own wisdom; and though they will acknowledge, that serpents may exist in the centre of large trees, and toads in the bosom of flints, yet because they cannot penetrate a few secrets of the material world, they will not stoop to the belief, that there are more honourable secrets, than they are themselves masters of. They forget that, for four thousand years, the simple overflowing of the Nile constituted a problem;-they forget how many centuries were required to unfold the causes of eclipses; the phenomenon of the rainbow; the fluctuation of the tides; the circulation of the blood; the propagation of sounds; and the nature of vision. Atheists, in fact, resemble those persons, who, in going the journey from London to Aberdeen, find themselves benighted at York, sleep there, and die. Their reasoning, as M. La Harpe has well observed in his eulogium of Fenelon, "tears from misery its consolation; from virtue its immortality; freezes the bosoms of the good; and renders justice only to the wicked, whom it annihilates."

XIII.

Can the grasshopper measure the mountain, on which it forms its nest? Can the beaver weigh the waters of the river, by the side of which she builds her edifice? Can the lion burst the barrier, which separates his strength from the intellect of his keeper? Can the starling understand, that the fruit, which it names, is the fruit on which it feeds? Neither can the whale acquire the sagacity of the seal; the dodo the docility and imitative faculty of the bullfinch; the caterpillar, the art or the industry of an ant;-nor the fern, or the sycamore, form one graduated notion of the exquisite sensibilityof the mimosa. Ye atheists!-see ye not how much more strong is the eagle, than the dove ;-how much more provident is the beaver, than the mule ;-how much more sagacious is the bee, than the moth?-All these ye have the power to see. But can ye reduce a globule of water to a smaller volume by compression? Can ye weave even so much as a spider's web? Will your chemical art convert the nectar of a flower into virgin honey? Can ye fructify a palm-tree? Or can ye give perfume to the nectarium of a citron? Content yourselves, then, in the infancy of your intellect. Nature, so far from admitting you to her council, has scarcely permitted you to place one footstep on her threshold. Perish, then, the system, founded on ignorance, on superficial acquirements, or on an addiction to one science, which, precluding the observance of that harmony, which subsists in them all,-staggers belief, because,

able to trace no farther, it fancies it has arrived at the limit of the chain. The molehill to an ant, is nearly as great a mountain, as the highest summit of Peru.

XIV.

Atheists resemble the geographers of antiquity, who when they had delineated all the countries, known to them, stated, on the margin of their maps, "all beyond this are dry deserts, frozen seas, and impassable mountains." And yet, many of those men, though they doubt of all the obvious impresses, daily and hourly before them, derive some hope to their fortunes from the art, relating to the discovery of an universal dissolvent, an universal medicine, and an universal ferment, which shall increase seeds, germs, and embryos, to infinite fecundity !-If we lead a blind man into a field, and inquire of him, whether he sees the sun, does he not answer "No ?" But if we lead an Atheist,-far more blind in mind, than the other is in vision,-and inquire of him, whether he believes there is a God, he answers "No!" And why?" "Because he is no were to be seen." Does the blind man argue, that, because he cannot see the sun, therefore, there is none ? A husbandman, ploughing in a valley, sees nothing before him, but the hills, which screen his hut and oxen from the storm at one season of the year, and from the heat of the sun, at another. The shepherd, on the other hand, mounts the spiracles of rocks, and beholds a boundless horizon before him a city at his feet; an island in an arm of the sea; and beyond, a vast expanse of ocean, studded with ships, extending farther than his eye can reach.

VOL. IV.

Y

Has not the shepherd a contempt for the husbandman, when he hears him doubt the existence of a ship, because he has never seen one? When he doubts, whether a river exists larger than his rivulet?— And, above all, when he doubts the existence of a sea, more extended than that part of the heaven, which covers the concave of his native valley?—The Atheist is the husbandman; the man of science is the shepherd.

Existence of a God!-It is more evident to the senses, than Atheists can perceive. A simplicity is there in the idea, far beyond the intricacy of Spinoza, or any of his imitators.-It forms, as it were, a circle ;-every part of which is evident to those, who occupy the centre. Doubt, on the other hand, is a pyramid; imposing in form, but susceptible of being seen only from angle to angle. When an Atheist doubts, he is satisfied. When a man of science doubts, he analizes :-analysis opens light; light produces conviction: from that conviction springs neither hatred, nor fear, nor despair; but admiration, preg_ nant with love and awful delight. "The soul immortal ?"Ah! as long-lived as the sun! When a bough of a shrub is cut off, will not the shrub throw out shoots in its place? When a claw of a shell-fish has been injured, or broken, will it not renew itself? When a worm is divided, will not its parts reunite? And shall not the soul?"The soul !-where does it exist? Anatomists

cannot discover, either its form, or its habitation." Neither can they behold the fluid of the magnet.1 Is

Perhaps the time may come when this fluid may be rendered visible.

there not a power, which can change an acorn into oak? a caterpillar into a butterfly? and an animal into dust? If there exist a power, capable of effecting these and similar changes, it can, assuredly, with as little difficulty as any of the minor operations of chemistry, reconvert that dust into an essence, which we, in utter ignorance of its nature, designate spirit.

We know nothing, by ocular demonstration, of the soul's flight. Neither do we know the uses or the means, employed by Nature, in many of her operations. We do not know the uses of the nipple of a man; we are at a loss for the uses of the zebra and the camelopard; of the hunch of the dromedary; and of the enormous excrescencies of the hornbill and the toucani -we are ignorant of the uses of zircon and glucine, two of the simple earths ;-we are ignorant of the process by which the diamond is chrystallized; and we are equally ignorant of the end, for which insects undergo their respective changes. Yet we know, that all these things are. Let the good man, then, calculate on the power and justice of the ETERNAL; who, in time most fitting for the purpose, will not only elicit the soul from the body; but convert its present anxious condition into a sabbath of eternal rest.

To feel thus is to feel assured of immortality;-the best consolation of the wretched, and the best hope for the unrestrained majesty of a rich and magnificent mind. To feel thus is comparatively to be advanced a thousand steps towards perfection; and as this feeling is almost as innate, in our vocabulary of enjoyments, as those arising from love, and all the more