a virtuous action, it inspires emotions of joy, which render him conscious that he is a free agent. This voice within is anterior to all reasoning, and as incapable of being invalidated as any other consciousness. Inexhaustible emotions of satisfaction spring from religious hopes. Reanimated by them, I no longer see tears without consolation, nor fear an eternal adieu.--The tomb, though a fearful, is but a frail barrier, which separates us from those real joys, of which the pleasures of a fugitive existence are but the shadow. Never would men have exchanged their natural convictions, their internal aspirations, their instinctive hopes of immortality, for the lurid and deceptive glare of infidelity, if religious views had not been disfigured by being combined with the grossest errors and prejudices. Of these, there are two which every good man ought to strive to eradicate from all minds, and if it were possible, to purge from the earth. The first causes us to behold in the divinity a menacing and implacable judge, constantly eager to execute vengeance. Monstrous conception! Revolting error! Infancy and old age, the two extremes of earthly existence, which from their feebleness, call for our most soothing cares, are those most persecuted with this vile and fierce prejudice. A cruel superstition has selected these terrific ideas, these horrible images, with which to besiege the bed of death, to light up the scene of agony--of parting and trembling apprehensions--with the flames of perdition. My bosom swells with mingled emotions, when I see any one attempting to darken the feeble and docile reason of a child with these sinister views. Pursued even in his dreams by these terrible menaces, before he knows the meaning of crime, he has already felt its torments. Astonishing infatuation! It is in this aspect that gloomy religionists have presented the compassionate and sustaining hope of the gospel. Instead of inspiring sweet and consoling ideas, they have succeeded in filling innocence with remorse. The other prejudice is intolerance, or that spirit which causes us to view all persons guilty, whose faith is different from ours. While religion enjoins it upon us to cover the faults of our kind with a veil of indulgence, intolerance teaches us to transform their opinions into crimes. Religion rears asylums for the unfortunate.--Intolerance prepares scaffolds for all whom she chooses to denominate heretics. The one invokes ministers of charity, and the other, executioners. The one wipes away tears, and the other sheds blood.