did not deny, that there was something to he said in behalf of 
Christianity, though they did not themselves allow its co- 
gency, and usually declined to listen to it. But we now find 
ourselves in a new period of scepticism : a new armoury has 
been opened. We are now no longer contending with Theists, 
who will admit the argument from design, and bear with those 
praises of the Creating Power and Love which flow unbidden 
and almost involuntarily from our lips, out of the abundance of 
our hearts, when Ave study and tell of the maiwels of the phy- 
sical and moral universe. The school of our opponents, like 
the Internationalists, imprints on the first page of its manual, 
“ This Society declares itself Atheist,” and, with the French 
Revolutionists of the last century, has carried by an over- 
whelming vote that proposition which to the Psalmist appeared 
to be evolved from the hearPs depth of human folly, “ There 
is no God.” In fact, we have reached an epoch of systema- 
tized Atheism, an absolute and more than Sadducean refusal 
to admit or hear of the existence of the Supernatural or the 
Transcendental : and whereas even Fichte would acknowledge 
the Infinite as a third with the Ego and the Non- ego in the 
triad of Existence, those with whom we have now to deal will 
admit of no element higher than humanity ; and sketch out 
for us an engaging form of the grand drama of Creation, from 
which the part of the Creator is omitted. This system has its 
apostles, who lecture, alas ! to not unwilling hearers, on “ the 
good cause,” “ the emancipation of humanity from thraldom,” 
“ the elevation of man by the refutation of those fables of a 
superior Power which retard his intellectual development and 
limit his enjoyment of existence.” One of the earlier thinkers, 
or rather of the forerunners, of this school, to whom I 
have already alluded, the late Mr. Buckle, distinctly lays down 
the principle that the prosperity of a country depends upon its 
rejection of religious restraints. He flatly contradicts Jehosha- 
pliat's exhortation to his people, “ Believe in the Lokd your 
God, so shall ye be established ; believe His prophets, so shall 
ye prosper.” In proportion as a nation is religious, in that 
same proportion, according to him, it is held back from the 
possibility of attaining happiness or greatness ; as it divests 
itself, little by little, of Religion, so it begins and continues to 
flourish. In short, he either deliberately confounds Religion 
with grovelling Superstition, or is unable to see the difference 
between the two, in his haste to arrive at the grand conclusion, 
in which I believe Mandeville forestalled him, that all religions 
are equally false, and nearly equally mischievous. 
There is much wisdom, the wisdom of the serpent, in this 
altered tactic of the unbelieving school. David's “ fool ” is 
