298 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



as well as true, religion. The contemplation of 

 the earth and heavens called into action this 

 religious tendency in man ; and to say that the 

 worship of the material world formed or suggested 

 this religious feeling, is to invert the order of 

 possible things in the most unphilosophical man- 

 ner. Idolatry is not the source of the belief in 

 God, but is a compound of the persuasion of a 

 supernatural government, with certain extrava- 

 gant and baseless conceptions as to the manner 

 in which this government is exercised. 



We will quote a passage from an author who 

 has illustrated at considerable length the hypo- 

 thesis that all religious belief is derived from the 

 worship of the elements. 



" Light, and darkness its perpetual contrast ; 

 the succession of days and nights, the periodical 

 order of the seasons ; the career of the brilliant 

 luminary which regulates their course ; that of 

 the moon his sister and rival ; night, and the 

 innumerable fires which she lights in the blue 

 vault of heaven ; the revolutions of the stars, 

 which exhibit them for a longer or a shorter 

 period above our horizon ; the constancy of this 

 period in the fixed stars, its variety in the wan- 

 dering stars, the planets ; their direct and retro- 

 grade course, their momentary rest ; the phases 

 of the moon waxing, full, waning, divested of all 

 light ; the progressive motion of the sun upwards, 

 downwards ; the successive order of the rising 



