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man, we have been placed in relations to our fellow-creatures 
by a Supreme Authority, and that these relations which He 
has established we have observed or violated. Hence it does 
not matter whether our fellow-man be cognisant of our action 
or not, we are alike self-condemned or self-applauded in the 
presence of the great King. But this could not be, unless 
we stood in conscious relation to Him as the rightful Supreme 
Ruler. 
This inward testimony to the existence of a Supreme 
Ruler is universal. Hence all nations, as far back as we can 
trace their existence, have had a religion and a God. And 
the more primitive their condition the more precise and 
definite their views on the relations they sustain to the Creator 
and Upholder of all things. During the present century the 
ancient records of Egypt, of Assyria, and the whole of Meso- 
potamia have been disinterred and read; researches in Persia 
have brought to light the condition of the whole Iranian 
tribes prior to the reformation of Zoroaster, and as its conse- 
quence; while the Vedas,—the religious poems of their 
kindred Indian Aryans,—have been written and translated ; 
and profound researches into the ancient literature of China 
have unveiled the doctrine and the worship of the Chinese 
before and since Confucius ; and the result of the whole is, that 
we find in these nations, from the time of their existence as 
separate and distinct communities, religion,—after the special 
manner of each,—was the primary and most prominent pecu- 
larity of their combined action. 
In Egypt, religion entered into the entire social and indivi- 
dual life of the nation, regulating every private action and 
requiring a varied and complete virtue, which furnished terms 
for every Christian grace to the Coptic translators of the New 
Testament. While it ruled the people, it controlled the king, 
who was the high priest of the Supreme God. In Assyria a 
pure and dominant despotism prevailed, such as we might 
expect from the successors of him who was a ‘ mighty hunter 
before the Lord.” In the records of the Mesopotamians, 
therefore, we see only the king, who undertakes all his works, 
builds all his cities, fights all his battles at the bidding of the 
God, his father, and to establish his worship. The Iranians, as 
might be expected from their nomadic, and quiet, and contem- 
plative character and habits, returned to the pure and simple 
worship of the Creator, whose only symbol was brilliant light, 
and with whom no moral corruption could abide. In Ahuré 
Maedio they partly beheld the varied, full, and limitless 
perfection which the Jew saw in Jehovah; hence their 
morality embraced every devout, individual, and social virtue, 
