The belief in the providence of some superior being or beings, has ever been a source of obligation to mankind in all ages and countries. Man may be pronounced to be emphatically a religious being. Every where, whether savage or civilized, do we behold him looking to the god or gods of nature, and dreading their punishment, not only in the world to come, but even in this. It is this spirit of devotion which "calls forth the hymn of the infant bard, as well as the anthem of the poet of classic times. It prompts the nursery tale of superstition, as well as the demonstration of the school of philosophy." "If you search the world," says Plutarch, "you may find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without money; but no one ever saw a city without a deity, without a temple, or without some form of worship;" and Maximus Tyrius, another of the ancients, declares that, "in such a contest, and tumult, and disagreement of opinions on other subjects, you may see this one law and speech acknowledged by common accord, that there is one God, the king and father of all, and many gods, the children of God, and ruling together with him. This the Greek says, and this the Barbarian says; and the inhabitant of the continent, and the islander, and the wise and the unwise." This universal consent in the operation of a superintending and controlling providence, is one of the most luminous and important facts of our nature. It rests the evidence of natural religion not upon the unsteady basis of argument or reason--not upon the sophisms of philosophers, or the edicts of monarchs, or popes, or councils; but upon the immoveable basis of nature--upon _instinct_ itself. "There is no era," says Mr. Allison, "so barbarous, in which man has existed, in which traces are not to be seen of the alliance which he has felt between earth and heaven; and amid the wildest as amid the most genial scenes of an uncultivated world, the rude altar of the barbarian every where marks the emotions that swelled in his bosom, when he erected it to the awful or beneficent deities whose imaginary presence it records."