The doctrine of mediation and of one Divine Mediator, as it involved the relations of men to the Creator, moral and providential Ruler and Redeemer, was the basis and prime element in the patriarchal and Levitical economies, which prescribed a religion not merely for dependent, but for fallen, guilty creatures, no acts of whom, whether of obedience in performing ordinary duties, or of religious homage, sacrifices, prayers or offerings, could be accepted unless rendered in the exercise of faith in the appointed Mediator, and a consciousness of entire dependence on his merits, and the efficacy of his mediation, as the only ground of acceptance, and of the bestowment of blessings on them. Hence the typical sacrifices, and all the rites, ordinances, and prescriptions of that system. But from the nature of the case, and the consciousness of dependence, helplessness and misery in those who turned away from the true worship, a sense of the necessity of mediation and a mediator must naturally have been felt by them, as well as by those of the other party. Without a sense of that necessity they would neither have projected nor adopted any religion whatever. It is the sole basis of all false religions. Those who have it not, must be classed with atheists or deists. The Jews who nominally reject the doctrine, and really reject the true Mediator, palpably contradict and pervert the religion which they profess, and virtually assign to their rites and forms the office of mediation. Nothing can be more unlikely or more absurd than the supposition that nations, tribes, or individuals should contrive or adopt or persevere in the practice of a false religion, without a notion more or less correct, and a conviction more or less strong and effective, of the existence of a Supreme Being, to whose will the striking events of providence, the vicissitudes in their own experience, their acts, their prayers, their fears and hopes, had a real, though it might be a mysterious and incomprehensible, reference. But with such conviction, their false religion, naturally in theory, and necessarily in order to such effect upon their hopes and fears as to induce their perseverance in it, refers ultimately to that mysterious, unseen, and, without intermediate agencies and instruments of mediation, inaccessible Being. Such fears and such conviction, coupled with the uncertainties of the future, and with impending or foreboded evils, are, like instincts, deep seated, in the very nature of man. And hence, with reference to the false system under consideration, the facility, on the one hand, with which imposture, delusion, and desperate infatuation might take effect; and the absurdity, on the other hand, of supposing that Baal, whose tabernacle in the sun, and whose manifestations in fire, light, air or water were ever visibly or sensibly present and familiar; or that any of the animals consecrated to him, or of the representative material images