most plainly shows, that either the capacities of the sceptics are not strong enough to balance the contending points of the proposition, or that they are quite indifferent about it. If, the former; let them ask for a spirit of understanding from God, and he will give it to them: if the latter; the system might answer very well, if the sceptic could, like God, say "Be," and he is; or, to his soul, "Return to nothing, be thou annihilated for ever." this is not in his power, it behoves him, as a reasonable and as an accountable being, to make some provision for that immortal part of him which will survive the wreck of ages.

But as

Let us suppose that we are in a foreign country, say Persia, and that we set out to visit Ispahan. We proceed for some time very well, till all at once we come to a

place where four roads meet, we are at a loss which road to take, and we ask several people whom we meet there, which is the road to Ispahan? they all tell us that not one of the roads we see will take us to the place we seek; that they, like us, had started in quest of it, but missing the road, they were now content to remain and amuse themselves where they were, and they advise us to do the same.

While in this state of uncertainty, a sage accosts us, and points out to us the true road to Ispahan. Now, as our only chance of reaching the place was by following the advice of the sage, would it not have been madness to have neglected doing so? Just so does the sceptic act, who neglects to take the only road pointed out to him which can lead him to the city of refuge.

Were our knowledge of the conduct of sceptics, acquired only from reading novels and romances, we should at once pronounce such conduct to be a fiction. Our knowledge of the world driving us from such a supposition, our next opinion is, that there are people in the world who are possessed. For human nature, notwithstanding its fallen state, could not, if left to itself, be so entirely careless of its best interests. And what convinces us of this opinion is, that we perceive a degree of rancour in sceptics whenever the blessed name of Jesus is mentioned, which is not usual to feel against an opponent. The constant term by which Voltaire, in his "Letters to the King of Prussia," calls our Lord, is, the "wretch"! And throughout the whole of his correspond

ence with that monarch, he gives our blessed Lord no other name.

The Scriptures inform us,

that the

devil did actually take possession of the bodies of men, and we have never been told that this power in the devil has ceased. Seeing, then, that the enemy of mankind may still be permitted to become an inmate in the bosom of man, how solicitous we should all be to have no weak nor vacant part for the arch-fiend to take possession of.

Materialists, or atheists, say that every thing is composed of matter. But if chance, or a fortuitous jumble of matter, formed the world, how comes it that such a connected system is visible in the universe? The regular succession of the seasons, of day and of night, show plainly that design was employed, and design

shows a thinking power; now matter cannot think. The atheist's own mind might teach him this. He can think, he can plan, he can reflect. What enables him to do so? It cannot be the lump of organized matter of which he imagines himself composed? We are forced, therefore, to come to the conclusion, that it is the spirit or soul which gives to man the faculty of thinking and reflecting, &c.

The order, symmetry, and fitness of the works of the creation, most abundantly prove that the world could not have been formed without a plan.

Were the universe a confused and irregular mass, day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, coming and going at no fixed period, then indeed we might imagine the world formed by the blind action of matter; but the universe