other able writers, we owe its suppression in this country; for they pressed it down with a weight of sound argument, from which it has never been able to raise itself. For although in our time, in France and Germany a subtle Atheism was revived, and spread its unhallowed and destructive influence for many years throughout the Continent, it made but little progress in this better-instructed nation. Atheism, in its primary sense, comprehends, or at least goes beyond, every heresy in the world; for it professes to acknowledge no religion, true or false. The two leading hypotheses which have prevailed, among Atheists, respecting this world and its origin, are, that of Ocellus Lucanus, adopted and improved by Aristotle, that it was eternal; and that of Epicurus, that it was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms. “That the soul is material and mortal, Christianity an imposture, the Scripture a forgery, the worship of God superstition, hell a fable, and heaven a dream, our life without providence, and our death without hope, like that of asses and dogs, are part of the glorious gospel of our modern Atheists.” The being of a God may be proved from the marks of design, and from the order and beauty visible in the world; from universal consent; from the relation of cause and effect; from internal consciousness; and from the necessity of a final as well as an efficient cause. Of all the false doctrines and foolish opinions that ever infested the mind of man, nothing can possibly equal that of Atheism, which is such a monstrous contradiction of all evidence, to all the powers of understanding, and the dictates of common sense, that it may be well questioned whether any man can really fall into it by a deliberate use of his judgment. All nature so clearly points out, and so loudly proclaims, a Creator of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, that whoever hears not its voice, and sees not its proofs, may well be thought wilfully deaf, and obstinately blind. If it be evident, self-evident to every man of thought, that there can be no effect without a cause, what shall we say of that manifold combination of effects, that series of operations, that system of wonders, which fill the universe, which present themselves to all our perceptions, and strike our minds and our senses on every side? Every faculty, every object of every faculty, demonstrates a Deity. The meanest insect we can see, the minutest and most contemptible weed we can tread upon, is really sufficient to confound Atheism, and baffle all its pretensions. How much more that astonishing variety and multiplicity of God’s works with which we are continually surrounded! Let any man survey the face of the earth, or lift up his eyes to the firmament; let him consider the nature and instincts of brute animals, and afterward look into the operations of his own mind, and will he presume to say or suppose that all the objects he meets with are nothing more than the result of