We will here relate an anecdote, showing that such ideas of the Supreme Being are repulsive even to the unenlightened heathen: In Smith's "Gulf of Guinea" it is stated, that, as a Christian missionary was presenting the doctrine of the Christian religion to Pepples, King of Bonny, and told him that God gave his only-begotten son to die for us,--to be put to death for our sins,--the king stopped him by saying, "Do you think me a fool to believe such palaver as that,--that God would kill his own son to please himself; get mad at man, and then kill his own son, instead of killing him? Never! never can I believe such fool palaver as that, It is a big fool lie." "I tried," says the missionary, "to impress upon his mind that nothing would satisfy divine justice but such a sacrifice; but he cut me short by exclaiming, 'That will do; that will do: I have got enough of such fool palaver.'" Quite a sensible "heathen" was King Pepples. CHAPTER XLII.--SPECIAL PROVIDENCE, AN ERRONEOUS DOCTRINE. All the holy books, and nearly all holy men who have figured in the world, have cherished a belief in what is termed "special providences,"--a doctrine which teaches that God individually and personally superintends the affairs, not only of all nations, but of each individual human being, now amounting in number to about fourteen hundred millions. It seems strange that the striking absurdity of such an assumption has not struck every mind possessing the power to reflect or investigate. The thought of his looking after the affairs and happiness of fourteen hundred millions of human beings at a time, besides running several thousand millions of worlds, far excels any of the astounding feats of the evil genii of Gulliver. In the sublimity of its absurdity and impossibility, it stands without a rival. It expands beyond the utmost stretch of human credulity. Like all the other doctrines of the popular creed, it sprang up in an age of the world when the human mind accepted every thing presented to it without investigation,--when nothing was rejected on the ground of its being too absurd to be believed. And an absurdity, when once established, no matter how monstrous or how stultifying to the intellectual or reasoning faculties, can bid defiance to the efforts of the few men of the world whose minds are too much expanded and enlightened to accept such gross absurdities. There are several objections to the doctrine of "special providences," both of a logical or scientific character, and also upon moral grounds, which shows that it should have no place in an age of scientific intelligence.