In applying to these important articles of belief the name of First Truths, or primary principles of moral conviction, I do not mean to ascribe to them any thing of the nature of innate ideas. I mean only that they arise, with a rapid or instantaneous conviction entirely distinct from what we call a process of reasoning, in every regulated mind, when it is directed, by the most simple course of reflection, to the phenomena of nature without, and to the moral feelings of which it is conscious within. It appears to be a point of the utmost practical importance, that we should consider them as thus arising out of principles which form a part of our moral constitution; as it is in this way only that we can consider them as calculated to influence the mass of mankind. For, if we do not believe them to arise, in this manner, by the spontaneous exercise of every uncorrupted mind, there are only two methods by which we can suppose them to originate;--the one is a direct revelation from the Deity,--the other is a process of reasoning or of investigation, properly so called, analogous to that by which we acquire the knowledge of any principle in natural science. We cannot believe that they are derived entirely from revelation, because we find the belief existing where no revelation is known, and because we find the sacred writers appealing to them as sources of conviction existing in the mental constitution of every man. There is an obvious absurdity, again, in supposing that principles, which are to regulate the conduct of responsible beings, should be left to the chance of being unfolded by processes of reasoning, in which different minds may arrive at different conclusions, and in regard to which many are incapable of following out any argument at all. What is called the argument _a priori_ for the existence and attributes of the Deity, for instance, conveys little that is conclusive to most minds, and to many is entirely incomprehensible. The same observation may be applied to those well-intended and able arguments, by which the probability of a future state is shewn from analogy and from the constitution of the mind. These are founded chiefly on three considerations,--the tendency of virtue to produce happiness, and of vice to be followed by misery,--the unequal distribution of good and evil in the present life,--and the adaptation of our moral faculties to a state of being very different from that in which we are at present placed. There is much in these arguments calculated to elevate our conceptions of our condition as moral beings, and of that future state of existence for which we are destined; and there is much scope for the highest powers of reasoning, in shewing the accordance of these truths with the soundest inductions of true philosophy. But, notwithstanding all their truth and all their utility, it may be doubted whether they are to any one the foundation of his faith in another state of being. It must be admitted, at least, that