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been weak, who were belter qualified to expose ils unsoundness? if 

 our national faith were a mere fable, a political superstition, why 

 were minds which boldly destroyed prejudices in science, blind to 

 those in religion? They read, examined, weighed, and believed; 

 and the same vigorous intellect that dispersed the mists which con- 

 cealed the temple of human knowledge, was itself illuminated with 

 the radiant truths of divine revelation. 



" Such authorities, and let me now add to them the name of 

 Sir William Jones, are deservedly entitled to great weight. Let 

 those who superciliously reject them, compare their intellectual 

 powers, their scientific attainments and vigour of application, with 

 those of the men whom I have named: the comparison may per- 

 haps lead them to suspect, that their incredulity (to adopt the idea 

 of a profound scholar) may be the result of a little smattering in 

 learning, and great self-conceit ; and that by harder study, and a 

 humbled mind, they may regain the religion which they have left. 

 — The investigation and the propagation of truth, as Sir William 

 Jones has himself declared, in the following elegant couplets, was 

 the fixed object of his whole life. 



" Before thy mystic altar, heavenly Truth, 

 I kneel in manhood, as I knelt in youth : 

 Thus let me kneel, till this dull form decay, 

 And life's last shade be brighten'd by thy ray : 

 Then shall my soul, now lost in clouds below, 

 Soar without bound, without consuming glow." 



I shall conclude these quotations with the remark of Lord 

 Teignmouth, that the friends of religion, who know the value of 

 the " sure and certain hopes" which it inspires, will remark with 



