Christian faith, with all the civilizations and improvements with which they themselves accompany it. In what they are now doing; in what they achieved for the benefit of all, in the last grand contest for the independence of nations and for the public happiness; and in the prospects opening to us, as time extends its onward flight, we may see a verification of the prophetic declaration, applicable to all nations that will so feel and act, and of late peculiarly true as to the British Islands. "The people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits." My purpose in making these remarks is to lead you to perceive that, as far as human agency, as active and enlightened intellect, as superior science, as great and varied knowledge, as literary exertions of all sorts, and as an unsleeping zeal and unexampled activity, aided by warlike victories, scarcely paralleled before in their number, rapidity, and territorial extent, could have overthrown the only true religion in the world, there has been full reason to suppose that it must have been subverted by their attacks. Human causes alone, if no other had assisted, would not have rescued it. The right inference, therefore, seems to be, that Divine agency, by the human means which it put in action and guided, was necessary to preserve what it had inculcated and established; and that it has been operating effectually to that end. We may estimate the danger, and from that appreciate justly the need of such influence, by learning that the attacks on revealed truth have been so far successful as to unreligionize nearly a moiety of the French population; for it has been calculated that this portion of them are in the unbelieving state. The prospect seems not to be much better amid the * Daniel, c. xi., v. 32. 7,500,000 †M. Thibaudeau added to his "History of the Counsels of France" a statistical summary of religion in the French empire at that time when it included Belgium and the departments of the Rhine :Catholics who followed the constitutional priests Catholics who followed the refractory priests Persons born of Catholic parents, but following no mode of worship, either through indifference or on account of the interruption and persecution of religion over a great part of the country 13,000,000 Persons belonging to no religion whatever, by their manner of thinking and acting 4,000,000 Protestants of various communities. Jews &c. 3,000,000 35,000,000 present legislators of our kinsmen in North America.* It is true that Napoleon Bonaparte re-established a Catholic hierarchy in France; but this was not because he was attached to Christianity, but merely for the political benefits he hoped to derive from it. He avowed this to his confidential counsellor. Theoretically, he was not an atheist; but, like many who also avow a general theism, he had the same aversion to revealed truths, to all recorded communications from the Deity which they entertain, and from which paganism at first originated. These facts, combined with the writings of so large a portion of the German clergy, who have treated the Scriptures as mere myths and fables in all their narrations of the "The truth is, that, as in numerous parishes all over the country there had been no religious worship performed for many years, religious ideas had become very much weakened in the minds of the people."-Thib. Le Consulat, vol. ii., p. 169. * It was stated in November last (1836), at a public meeting at Warrington, that in a late "New-York Observer" it was mentioned, that out of two hundred and ninety-one members of the Congress in the United States, only twenty-one were Christians. (a) † After the battle of Marengo, he invited the pope to enter into negotiations on the subject of religion in France. During these he consulted with several of his state counsellors. One of these had a conversation, which Thibaudeau, in his "Memoirs," thus describes from him : "After their dinner at Malmaison, the first consul took him alone into the park, and led the conversation to the subject of religion. He spoke at some length against the various systems of philosophers, deism, natural religion, &c., and declared them to be nothing but ideology. 'Listen! he added; I was walking about this solitary spot last Sunday evening. Everything was silent around me, when the sound of the clock of the church at Ruel at once struck my ear. I felt strongly affected. Such is the power of first impressions and of education. I then said to myself, What influence these things must have upon simple and credulous persons. Let your philosophers answer that. There must be a religion for the people; but this religion must be in the hands of government. At present fifty emigrant bishops lead the clergy of France. We must destroy this influence; and for this the authority of the pope is required. People will say that I am a papist. I was a Mohammedan in Egypt, and I shall be here a Catholic, for the good of the people. I do not believe in religions, but the idea of a God! Then, raising his hands towards heaven, be exclaimed, Who, then, made all this?"" ་ So theists in theory only, and worldly politicians reason. They admit a Deity in name, but will receive no precepts or religious instructions from him, and support any solely for its popular effect. (a) Of course the writer of this statement had some limiting idea in his mind, which Mr. Turner has overlooked, or of which he was ignorant. Of the 291 members referred to, probably not one would avow himself not a Christian, although, as in the British parliament and other legislative bodics, the Christianity of a very large proportion would not stand the test of a rigid evangelical inquiry. The remark in the text has no substantial foundation, if applied by way of comparison.-Am. Ed. Divine interferences, lead us to feel strongly that the maintenance of Christianity, as to its human support, has rested and still rests principally on the British populations, and that they are the present agents and instruments used and directed to preserve and diffuse it.* Others may deem religion necessary for its state benefits; but a political patronage of it, without the sincere belief, would not long perpetuate it.† These circumstances illustrate to us the state and action of the human mind in the anterior ages, when it separated itself from its Creator, and invented and adopted its paganisms instead; the same disinclination to any specific Divine revelation and the depreciation or rejection of what has been delivered. Thus the primitive descendants of Noah soon put aside what had been communicated to him and his family, as millions now dislike and relinquish the sacred records which we possess. The principle seems to be the same in both cases. When the atheist or skeptic abandons and expunges from his mind the real God, or disbelieves his existence, then man becomes in his conception, and would so be if his theory were true, the greatest known being in the universe. Man then stands at the head of nature instead of God: and from this feeling, the Buddhist system gives him this superiority to all the divinities which others are worhsipping. Another * Yet it is conceded that America equals, if she does not surpass, all other nations in missionary effort.-Am. Ed. At some moments Napoleon felt that an actual religion was expressly wanted by mankind for its moral utilities--something more than theoretical deism. "On 4th June, 1800, just before the battle of Marengo, he wrote from Milan to his two consular colleagues at Paris- Let the atheists of Paris say what they please, I shall attend to-morrow the performance of the " Te Deum," in the cathedral.' He went to it in great state, and the next day he summoned the parochial clergy of Milan, and told them that he would protect the Roman Catholic religion; adding 'In any state of society, no man can be virtuous and equitable without knowing whence he comes and whither he is to go. Mere reason cannot fix our ideas on the subject. Without religion we must be groping continually in the dark. There can be no good morality without religion. A society without religion is exposed to all the shocks of the most violent passions, and falls a prey to the internal discord which must infallibly produce its ruin.'"-Thibaudeau's Consulat, vol. i., Pieces Justif. The Sanscrit professor, Mr. Wilson, in his lecture on Buddhism to the Ashmolean Society at Oxford, remarked, that the Buddhist priests inculcated the belief in the superior nature of man, made perfect even to that of the gods, and on this account they neglected and depreciated the Braminical divinities. Their great figure in all their worship was Buddha, the author of their system, who is still revered in China, Japan, Ava, Siam, Thibet, and Tartary. Mr. Hodgson, in his paper on Bud principle equally operates. Revelations from the supreme require us to form and regulate our mind and conduct according to their disclosures, counsels, and precepts. But to such control and government the great majority of mankind have been in every age repugnant; and as by disbelief they get rid of their idea of the obligation, their desire of the independence, and of acting as they please, is a strong inducement to discredit what they dislike. Even theism has the same tendency from similar impressions; for it is obvious, that if no system has been specially revealed and enjoined, all religious ideas and practice, and moral self-regulations must, like the pagan idols and worship, be the mere matters of individual judgment, liking, fancy, choice, and speculation, none of more authority than another, and those of others never preferred by any one to his own. All these facts and views confirm the impression, that, as far as the human mind alone has acted and would operate, paganism, atheism, and a disbelief of specific revelations have been and would continue to be the exclusive possessors of the social world, and that nothing but Divine interference and agency has rescued mankind from them. This happy result has been effected by that peculiar process which the Divine wisdom has devised and kept in operation; and to the consideration of that we will now direct our next attention. LETTER XXXVIII. The Divine Process for the complete Formation of Mankind a prospective and progressive one, foreseen and settled at the Creation to be so. -Their Nature made to be improvable with this View.-The Improve ments it had always to acquire. MY DEAR SON, The leading feature of the process which has been adopted by the Deity in his intellectual agency and revelations has been their PROGRESSIVE nature, working out good in every dhism in Nepaul, read to the Royal Asiatic Society, described it to be "in a few words, monastic asceticism in morals and philosophic skepticism in religion." VOL. III.-L L generation, but producing larger and richer effects in each series of the evolving ages; and operating onward to a grand or ulterior completion, which has not yet been attained; but to which it is steadily advancing human nature and the final population of our globe. That a progressive course of improvement has been pursued with mankind, we perceive by what has actually occurred. On looking back to the earliest ages of society, and on contrasting these with the world now around us, and by studying the state of the intermediate periods, we see that there has been a gradationary improvement, a successive progression of human nature in all things, from the deluge to our present day. It is most palpable to the common eye in our sciences, our manufactures, our general knowledge, and our multifarious literature. On these there can be no doubt or mistake. Compare Egypt and Phoenicia with Greece-Greece with the Roman empire in its most advanced state-all these nations with our own country and Europe as the sixteenth century closed; and our predecessors all over the world at that time with what we and the country around us now are: compare all these successively with each other, and the progressive series will be as clearly visible to us as the succession of the dawn, the morning, and noontide is to our bodily eye, in every day that occurs to us. The progression is not less manifest in religion and government-in legislation and morals, and in all the conveniences of life-in taste, judgment, polity, and philosophy-in civilization and refinement of mind, in manners, in elegance, in courtesy, in philanthropy, in general civilization, and in individual benevolence. The more minute and extended our knowledge becomes, both of past nations and of our contemporaries, the more clearly we shall discern the improvements which have been effectuating in human nature, and also the fact that they have been gradually attained; gradual both in the successive acquisitions, and also in the diffusion of them among the various and multiplying populations of the globe. Every individual is in himself a progressive being of this sort, and is, in his own personal experience, an illustration of the progressive advancement of his nature, in the series of the generations which have preceded him, and in the separate nations by which he is surrounded. What has taken place in himself has taken place in his |