CONSECRATION OF A FEMALE DEITY 



291 



Liberty ascended afterwards, to return to the 

 temple, and, in re-entering it, she turned about, 

 casting a look of benevolence upon her friends; 

 when she got in, every one expressed with enthu 

 siasm the sensations which the Goddess excited 

 in them by songs of joy ; and they swore, never, 

 never to cease to be faithful to her.&quot; 



Such were the festivities and ceremonies which 

 were prescribed for the installation of this new 

 divinity, and such the shameless folly and daring 

 impiety with which they were accompanied! 

 Such is the Religion of what has been presump 

 tuously celled Philosophy, when it has shaken off 

 its allegiance to tne Christian Revelation a reli 

 gion as inconsistent with the dictates of reason 

 and the common sense of mankind, as it is with 

 the religion of the Bible. Never, in any age, 

 was Philosophy so shamefully degraded, and ex 

 posed to the contempt of every rational mind, as 

 when it thus stooped to such absurd foolery and 

 Heaven-daring profanity. Besides the impiety 



13 



of the whole of this procedure, which is almogt 

 without a parallel in the annals of the world- 

 there was an imbecility and a siUinfss in it, alto 

 gether incompatible with those sublime ideas of 

 creation and Providence, which true philosophy, 

 when properly directed, has a tendency to inspire. 

 And how inconsistently ,as well as inhumanely, did 

 these worshippers of &quot;liberty,&quot; &quot;reason,&quot; and 

 &quot;truth,&quot; conduct themselves to the representative 

 of their goddess, when, soon after, they doomed the 

 lady, whom they had kissed and adored in the 

 &quot;temple of truth,&quot; to expire under the stroke of the 

 guillotine! Such occurrences appear evidently 

 intended by the moral Governor of the world, to 

 admonish us of the danger of separating science 

 from its connexions with revealed religion, and 

 to show us to what dreadful lengths, in impiety 

 and crime, even men of talent will proceed, when 

 the truths of Revelation are set aside, and the 

 principles and moral laws of Christianity arc 

 trampled under foot. 



