country over which he ruled as a member of the Directory, Chernin Dupontés, Dupont de Nemours and Bernardin de St. Pierre constituting with himself the four Evangelists of the new cult. The first mentioned of these must, indeed, be regarded as its inventor, and his "Manuel des Théophilanthrophiles" supplies the fullest exposition of it. But it was La Reveillère-Lepeaux whose influence gave form and actuality to the speculations of Chemin, and whose credit obtained for the new sect the use of some dozen of the principal churches of Paris, and of the choir and organ of Notre Dame. The formal _début_ of the new religion may, perhaps, be dated from the 1st of May, 1797, when La Reveillère read to the Institute a memoir in which he justified its introduction upon grounds very similar to those urged in our own day against "the theological view of the universe." Moreover, he insisted that Catholicism was opposed to sound morality, that its worship was antisocial, and that its clergy--whom he contemptuously denominated _la prêtraille_, and whom he did his best to exterminate--were the enemies of the human race. In its leading features the new Church resembled very closely the system which we have just been considering, offered to the world by the author of "Ecce Homo." It identified the Deity with Nature:[38] religion, considered subjectively, with sentiment, and objectively, with civilization; and it regarded Atheists and the adherents of all forms of faith--with the sole exception of Catholics --as eligible for its communion. Its dogmas, if one may so speak, were a hotchpotch of fine phrases about beauty, truth, right, and the like, culled from writers of all creeds and of no creed. Its chief public function consisted in the singing of a hymn to "the Father of the Universe," to a tune composed by one Gossee, a musician much in vogue at that time, and in lections chosen from Confucius, Vyasa, Zoroaster, Theognis, Cleanthes, Aristotle, Plato, La Bruyère, Fénélon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Young, and Franklin, the Sacred Scriptures of Christianity being carefully excluded on account, as may be supposed, of their alleged opposition to "sound morality." The priests of the "Natural Religion" were vested in sky-blue tunics, extending from the neck to the feet, and fastened at the waist by a red girdle, over which was a white robe open before. Such was the costume in which La Reveillére-Lepeaux exhibited himself to his astonished countrymen, and having the misfortune to be--as we are told--"petit, bossu, et puant," the exhibition obtained no great success. It must be owned, however, that the Natural Church did its best to fill the void caused by the disappearance of the Christian religion. It even went so far as to provide substitutes for the Sacraments of Catholicism. At the rite which took the place of baptism, the father himself officiated, and, in lieu of the questions prescribed in the Roman Ritual, asked the godfather,