It is, perhaps, also the confused sentiment of that first model, which leads us to religion, when we see a virtuous man. Men, with their fatal systems, would alter and annihilate every thing, but the comfortable hopes and thoughts which arise from a profound and rational admiration, will still resist that destruction. They vainly wish to make us consider such a sentiment as the simple play of blind matter, whilst all within us seems to invite us to search for a more noble origin. And how can we avoid seeing, in these great qualities of men, nobleness of soul, elevation of genius, expansion of heart, love of order, and interesting goodness; how avoid seeing, in this rich picture, the reflection of a celestial light, and concluding from it, that there is somewhere a first intelligence. Do rays exist without a centre of light? I know not, but hurried away by these reflections, I sometimes think, innate goodness, which we admire as the first rank in the scale of intelligent beings, in a more immediate manner, leads to the knowledge of the Author of nature; and when this innate morality is found united in some persons with a presentiment of the Divine Nature, there is, in this agreement, a charm which impresses us; a kind of unknown character which attracts our respect: as every tender and sublime thought is roused by the idea which we form of the souls of Socrates and Fenelon. At the same time, actuated by similar sentiments we experience a painful emotion, when we are informed, that there exist men, enemies to all these ideas; men, who had rather debase themselves and humanity, by attributing their origin to chance, than resolve to consider the spiritual faculties which they enjoy as a faint sketch of the sovereign intelligence. Thus, instead of employing their minds to lend some force to these comfortable truths, or, at least probabilities so dear, they, on the contrary, dispute their realty, and seek to embarrass by sophistry, the doctrines which tend to fortify the first dispositions of our nature: we see the materialists, rather then elevate themselves, drag us with them from happiness and hope; they only grant eternity to the dust, out of which, they say, we sprung. What honour, however, can they derive from those more enlightened views which they boast of, if they are only the result of a growth similar to that of plants; and if our spiritual faculties, so far from being lost, in some measure, in the infinite intelligence, so far from being united to a grand destiny, are only associated to this frail structure, which is every day, every hour, exposed to various dangers. What credit should we derive from these faculties, if they only enabled us to describe, with precision, the almost imperceptible circle of time, in which we live and die: if they only served to raise us above our equals during that short moment of life, which is hastening to lose itself in endless ages, as a light