operation, must harmonize with the eternal principles of truth. Now, if the existence of God contradicted any intuitive truth or fundamental axiom, it must be rejected; but it is only when we do violence to the laws of thought, it is only when we set aside intuitive principles and self-evident axioms, that we can resist the evidence of a God. We need not, indeed, contend with Descartes and his followers, that the idea of a God involves his existence; nor with Kant, that it is intuitive and self-evident; but the fact of the proposition being thus placed by some in the category of innate or intuitive truths, attests its perfect harmony with our mental constitution-so harmonious, indeed, that, when once proposed, and its evidence adduced, the mind perceives its agreement with known truth, and rests in it, as an established and fundamental axiom. The history of the human mind affords abundant evidence of this.

2. The existence of a God harmonizes with our moral nature. There is a law inscribed on the human heart more comprehensive, more special in its details, and more complete in its character, than all human codes; and more authoritative and powerful than all human tribunals. In conformity with this law, there is a faculty in the human mind which takes cognizance of the moral character of our actions, desires, and emotions; which approves of the good, and condemns the evil; and which brings man to account for his conduct, inflicting a pungent, caustic, and tormenting pain when we do wrong, and imparting a cordial, complacent approval, when we do well. We do not attempt to prove this, for proof is superfluous. Its existence is self-evident, it is an element in our constitution, a kind of moral instinct, and every man knows it by experience: It comes not at our bidding, and departs not at our command. It will not succumb to wealth, and it pays no respect to station. It awaits not the detection of the public eye, nor suspends its verdict on the decision of the magistrate. It extends its impartial survey over the most secret deeds, and scrutinizes the inward motives which lie concealed in the human breast. It lashes the empurpled tyrant before whom crouching sycophants fawn. It makes the murderer quail and tremble, though his

deeds be wrapped in impenetrable secrecy; and it sustains the virtuous martyr under scorn, derision, and death. Whence comes this moral sentiment? Is it the product of chemical affinities, or of the promiscuous aggregation of atoms? Is this a cause adequate to the effect? Do we feel this a conclusion to which reason can easily yield her assent? Nay, we instinctively feel the conclusion abhorrent to our reason. Does not the moral sentiment, the existence of conscience, point to a superior origin? Does it not speak as the vicegerent of another Being superior to ourselves and to all Nature, and proclaim our responsibility to a tribunal which takes cognizance of the emotions of the heart as well as the overt actions of the life? With the existence of a Supreme Being, the maker and governor of men, the faculty of conscience-the prevalence of moral sentiment has a perfect harmony; but with the system of materialism and atheism, it is full of anomalies and contradictions.

SECTION III.-THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IS IN HARMONY WITH THE WELL-BEING AND HAPPINESS OF MANKIND.

WE speak not here of man's eternal happiness, for that comes not within the scope of our present argument; we speak of his welfare and happiness on earth. What, then, is promotive of his happiness? Is vice, or virtue? Are temperance, chastity, rectitude, purity of conscience, and benevolence? or gross sensuality, injustice, violence, and cruelty? Human laws and human history decisively give the answer. Another question: Is atheism, or a belief in the existence of a God, promotive of virtue? Will the denial of a God restrain the malign passions, make the heart soft and tender, and stimulate to virtue and benevolence? or will a belief in his existence and presence encourage the villain's fraud, sanction the secret plot of the assassin, and nerve his arm for the bloody deed? Atheism! what is there in it to refine the intellect, or elevate and purify the character? It has neither a moral code nor creed, but it is

a cold and heartless negation of both. It saps the foundation of morals, and divests virtue of its highest authority, its most potent motives, its most effectual guard. With no God, there is no lawgiver, no governor, no superior judge, no tribunal higher than human, no future state, no responsibility, no reward to enkindle the hopes of the virtuous, no retribution to excite the apprehensions of the wicked, beyond the present transient life. In fact, atheism, according to the standard of its advocates, converts man into nothing more than a material machine, impelled by a stern necessity. Morality and virtue are words without meaning, moral obligation gives place to a selfish instinct, and fluctuating views of expediency become the only law and motive of man's conduct. Passion and appetite are thus unbridled; avarice and lust, ambition and self-interest, are left without control to work out their dire results, producing crime, disease, and misery in the individual, and disorganization and woe in society.

It is well for human nature that an entire community of atheists never existed in our world; but the near approach to such a state at one time in France produced the "Reign of Terror," and left on the page of history a dark and awful memorial of the inherent tendency of infidelity. The licentiousness and crime, the deeds of oppression, violence, and blood, which prevailed during the transient dominion of atheism, threatened soon to dissolve the entire fabric of society; and myriads, filled with dismay and terror at the grim spectre they had invoked, hastily sought a refuge from its exterminating woes by a return to a profession of belief in the being of a God. Hypocrisy itself was deemed a guard against the carnage and miseries of "the creed of despair."

On the other hand, the existence of God cordially believed, operates as a cogent restraint upon vice in every form, and as an incentive to every virtue. It places morality on its right foundation, clothes it with just authority, and enforces it by appropriate motives. It surrounds man with the presence of an all-seeing and heart-searching God, and invests the desires

and emotions of the heart, as well as the actions of the life, with responsibility. It tells man that though darkness and secrecy may shroud his crimes from open disgrace and public justice, he is amenable to another and a higher tribunal, from which there is no appeal. While the belief of a God thus frowns upon vice, it operates as a constant, ever-present, and powerful incentive to the cultivation and development of every virtue. The man who lives fully under its benign influence will make his instincts subordinate to reason; and his conduct will be characterized by integrity, humanity, temperance, justice, and benevolence. He will live as in the sight of a holy God, whose known will he is anxious to perform, and whose protection and favour he endeavours to secure. God will be an object of trust and hope, as well as of reverence and awe; and towards him the affections of his heart may ascend, and find satisfaction and delight.

As to the objection that mankind are not all virtuous and happy, even where the existence of a God is believed, we reply: All men do not properly live under the influence of this belief. But were this belief banished from the world, mankind would be immeasurably worse than they are-sunk in the deepest pollution, crime, and misery; for there is not a single vice which this belief does not restrain; there is not a virtue which it does not tend to promote and develop; and just in proportion as men live under its influence is vice subdued, and virtue and happiness enhanced. Myriads of individuals are living witnesses of its tendency to elevate, ennoble, and bless human nature; and if its prevalence were allowed to operate with equal power universally, it would elevate, ennoble, and bless the whole world.

Let us here pause to ask, What is the corollary of this argument? If the existence of God harmonizes with virtue, as well as with abstract truth, what is its character? Is this harmony an index of truth or of falsehood? Can we believe that truth is the ally of vice, and a lie the chief patron and support of virtue, and the grand promoter of human happiness? That were to contradict a fundamental axiom. With Dr. Reid, we may confidently affirm that "the interests of truth and of virtue can

never be found in opposition;" a sentiment which Mirabaud himself maintains.*

Thus, atheism is false, and the existence of God is a truth, and as such it harmonizes with all the truths of physical science, with man's intellectual and moral nature, and with the welfare and happiness of his being.

WHILE THE

CHAPTER XII.

EXISTENCE OF GOD IS

SUSTAINED BY DIRECT

EVIDENCE, AND IN HARMONY WITH ALL TRUTH, IT IS CONFIRMED BY THE GENERAL ASSENT OF MANKIND.

If the human mind is adapted for the acquisition of truth, it must be admitted that that which commands a rational assent in all ages, and among all people, both in the infancy of society and in the highest development of the human mind, must be true; unless, indeed, the attainment of truth be impossible, and the human mind be more adapted to believe a lie than to perceive a truth. A proposition universally believed, whenever its terms and evidence are understood, must be admitted to be a true proposition. Cicero affirms, that the consent of all nations to a proposition is the vox Naturæ, et argumentum veritatis— the voice of Nature, and an evidence of truth. Aristotle observes: "What seems true to some wise men is somewhat probable; what seems true to most or all wise men is very probable; what most men, both wise and unwise, assent unto, still more resembles truth; but what men generally consent in has the highest probability, and approaches so near to demonstrated truth, that it may pass for ridiculous arrogance and self-conceitedness, or for intolerable obstinacy and perverseness, to deny it."

What, then, is the fact in question? Has the belief of a

"Système de la Nature," vol. ii., part. ii., chap. xiii.