ideas of truth and the manner of its attack. At one time it praises the precepts of the gospel and again denounces the whole. At one time, it calls in the aid of its motives and soon denies the reality of their existence. Now objecting to revelation and exalting natural religion; soon it denies all, and sinks back to its dark and changing uncertainty. "In embracing such a philosophy, what satisfaction can be found;-what resting place for the mind? To infidel philosophers, it has plainly furnished none; for they have retreated and wandered from one residence to another, and have thus found, that they have discovered no place where they could comfortably and permanently abide. Wretched must be the condition of that mind, which, laboring with intense anxiety to discover a peaceful rest for an unsanctified conscience, and a final home at the close of a weary pilgrimage, finds within the horizon of its view, nothing but a structure built of clouds, variable in its form and shadowy in its substance, gay, indeed, with a thousand brilliant colors, and romantic with all the fantastical diversities of shape, but bleak, desolate, and incapable of being inhabited."*

5. Infidelity is as inconsistent as it is unstable. It is inconsistent with itself. Having no fixed character, or permanent principles of action, it is ever engaged in demolishing with one hand, what it has erected with the other. It, at one and the same time, praises Christianity for the purity of its precepts, and undermines the spirit of obedience; and even it has extolled these heavenly lessons, while it has burnt the volume that contained them, and sworn to exterminate every vestige of its influence. It has allowed Jesus Christ to be the perfection of its moral excellence, while it has denied the truth of the principles upon which that excellence was formed, even denied that he ever existed at all. It has acknowledged his worth and glory, and soon in madness cried "crush the wretch!" It has paid the same tribute of respect to the apostles of Christ-to the purity of their lives-the extent of their benevolence and labors, at the same time waged an exterminating war against them and the cause they sustained.

It has brought forward its system of natural religion, and by its boldest champions "declared it, in strong and solemn terms, a system of duties indispensable; that men are wholly accountable for the discharge of them, and that according to their fulfilment

or neglect of them, they would be judged and rewarded; yet that have sapped the foundation of this whole system, by undermining moral obligation and removing guilt from sin." It has denied the existence of truth, yet asserted its value; it has ridiculed Providence, yet trembled before it; it has rejected God and the Saviour, and in the hour of peril and the pains of death, has owned the being of the one, and implored the mercy of the other.

6. Infidelity has uniformly been immoral, debasing, and cruel. This must ever be its influence, while human nature shall remain unchanged. It has thrown off all salutary restraints, and opposes no check to the passions of men. It abandons the whole human family to the dominion of brutal instinct and lust; avowing, as the leading principle of its system, that all control of native passion, is undemanded violence to our constitution, and a barrier to the highest good of society. It has boldly asserted, that virtue lies in the indulgence of desire, and that true wisdom consists in seeking the gratification of the passions. It has denied the existence of a future state of rewards and punishments, and left no sense of obligation; and, in fact, denied that a sense of moral obligation could consist with virtue. Hume himself declares," that self-denial, self-mortification, and humility, are not virtues, but are useless and mischievous; and that adultery must be practised if we would obtain all the advantages of life." Another has said, "that all men and women were unchaste, and that there is no such thing as conjugal fidelity;" and again it is said, " that man may get all things if he can." These are but a few of the thousand precepts of infidel philosophy. And what can be expected from a system like this? Can safety, morality, and virtue live? Have they ever lived in the society of infidels ? As to private character, infidels are just what might be expected from their avowed principles. Lewdness has been their common sin. "The great infidel circle of France had not virtue enough to be married men;" and, together, they sunk to the beastliness of Sodom. Infidelity is not satisfied with sundering all the bonds of public and private virtue, but it rudely assails the social state, even to its domestic retirement. It will not allow any thing safe and sacred even here. This must be invaded, "that the highest ends of life may be obtained;" and our own land has been invaded and swept by this moral besom of destruction. Levelling the Sabbath, burning the Bible, denying eternity,

blotting out the fear and the belief of God, infidelity is prepared to walk through the land in blood, and waste all its fair fruits and tender plants, and in the name of pride and lust to seat itself on the grave of all our hopes. Having sundered the bonds of moral obligation, it throws man, a monster and a vampire on his race; dissolves his arrangements of order, revolutionizes his government, and drives out upon the open fields, in promiscuous crowds, rational men, as herds of brutes, instinct only for the purpose of ravage and lust. "The family, the foundation of the political edifice, the methodizer of the world's business, and the main-spring of its industry, infidels would demolish." Leaving desolate the hallowed retreat of domestic life, skepticism next invades the right of private possession, and opens a system of indiscriminate plunder and bloodshed, till all the sinews of government are relaxed, and the last authority of law is torn away, and a nation lies weltering in its own blood, and seeks refuge in iron-hearted despotism.

7. Infidelity has uniformly been unsuccessful in its efforts, and false in its promises. It has arisen ardent, active and boastful. Pledging to enthralled mankind, light, and liberty, and happiness; ascribing the evils of the world to its systems of religious faith, the uncertainty and fearfulness of the future, to the power of superstition, she has vowed to exterminate Christianity, and redeem the world. With these pledges, she has entered on her work, and what has she done? "Fired and maddened by the recital of what twelve men had accomplished, in overthrowing idolatry, and planting the christian religion, she has sworn to exterminate the name of Jesus, and to erase the last vestige of his truth." Infidels have indeed gathered up and burnt the Bible; they have demolished the Sabbath, and silenced the worship of God. But is this success? Christianity still lives; enlarges and beautifies its dominions. Though it has been proclaimed there is no God, and no religion; no divinity in nature, and in Providence; yet nature rolls on, unfolding new evidence of her Author, and strengthens belief in his providence, and brings crowded accessions to his worshippers. Though the immortality of the soul, and all moral obligation are rejected, the soul still clings to its hopes, and cannot, even in its guilt, throw off its fears; and the ties of mutual and social obligation, though rudely sundered, refuse to die. Civil governments rise on the ruins of revolutionary phrenzy, in which law is enacted and honored. The domestic economy lives in all its holy en

dearment; private right is held sacred still; conjugal fidelity, natural and chaste affection, are still found, and still spreading, and still loved. Infidelity is unsuccessful and false. She redeems not a solitary pledge.

She leaves her victims shorn of their virtue, and abandoned of their hopes; and pours upon them, in the conflict of death, the horrors of darkness and despair. Here her boasting ends, her vain-glory dies, and the terrors, at which she laughed, rise in the vigor of immortality.

8. Infidelity has always borne the character of arrogance. No defeat, no disappointment, no disgrace have disrobed her of this character. She is arrogant still. She has laid claim to all that is high-minded, spirited, magnanimous, and learned. She has claimed the authorship of the sole method of securing human perfectibility. She has not only pronounced upon what she knows and has examined in her own sphere, but upon all that lies beyond it."To be able to say that there is a God, we have only to look abroad on some definite territory, and point to the vestiges that are given of his power, and his presence somewhere. To be able to say that there is no God, we must walk the whole expanse of infinity, and ascertain by observation that such vestiges are to be found nowhere."*

Yet infidelity arrogantly pronounces, there is no God, and denies the force of every testimony, and presumes to decide not only for itself but for all. "The wonder turns on the great process by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence that can know that there is no God. What ages and what lights are requisite for this attainment? This intelligence involves the very attribute of Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of Deity, by which even he would be overpowered."†

9. Infidelity is at war with all the analogies of nature and providence. It has not only to meet the Bible, but the cloudless exhibition of truth, as drawn on the heavens and the earth. While in ignorance of its doctrines and its precepts, it may turn from the gospel or commit it to the flames, it has no power to quench the glories of the skies-no strength to arrest the march of Providence or close the fountains of exuberant goodness. So

plainly is God exhibited in his works, in ways harmonious with his word, that were the one removed, no excuse for sin and unbelief would be taken away while the other remained.

Infidelity may deny the existence of God, and yet the mind is carried irresistibly through the wide creation, and along the line of Providence and every where reads the impressive lesson of one all-pervading and all-powerful Agent. It may deny the existence of sin, and yet the traces of apostasy are drawn upon every object, and the soul itself, in its deep consciousness, responds to the lessons of nature and Providence. It may sport at the idea of suffering or of good from the apostasy or virtue of others, and yet it relies on past parental suffering and kindness, or pines and dies beneath causes started in ages past. It may trifle with the laws of retributive justice and the necessity of vicarious suffering, beyond what reformation and repentance can secure, and yet it meets at every step the peril of its crimes in the uniform wastings of nature's outraged and offended laws, and pines and sinks and expires beneath the wounds its own hands have inflicted, and which no tears of sorrow and no reform of life can heal. The laws of nature move on, and Providence advances, rewarding the obedient and leaving in wretchedness the offender, and points to the immutable truth of the Bible, that the wicked shall not go unpunished. Infidelity may ridicule the thought of a resurrection, and yet the alternations of the seasons roll round, and decayed nature puts on again her fresh beauties and preaches the possibility if not the certainty of another life. The skeptic may trifle with the eternity of his own being, yet nature, indestructible in every element, reads to his eye the lesson of immortality, and amid all his suicidal efforts to annihilate the consciousness of his responsible and undying being, a living, reigning and restless spirit speaks within and loudly warns of judgment and eternity.

10. Infidelity is also at war with the fulfilled prophecies of the Bible and with the genuine and authentic history of the world. The leading facts of the Bible stand prominent in the history of the earth, as clearly as her mountains and her seas. And the wonders of redemption, in the life and labors, the sufferings and death of its Author, with the high and successful career of his apostles, are facts to which sacred and profane record have alike affixed their sanction. And in these facts, so attested, is found accomplished the prophecy of near six thousand years, while almost countless events are springing up just