That doctrine which has the greatest tendency to secure our present and future happiness is the best; it proves itself to be so. That the Christian system does not tend to make us happier, may easily be shewn, by tracing its natural operations on the human mind. By it we are led to believe, that we are all miserable and ruined wretches; corrupt and exceedingly wicked from our very birth; naturally sinful, and opposed to the will of God in all our actions, words, and thoughts; and so far from deserving the common blessings of life, that if justice had been done us, we should long since have been cast into endless punishment. Tribulation, distress, and sore trials, are the common lot of mankind, especially the good. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." This world, it tells us, is a wretched, tiresome, and accursed place; a mere sink of guilt and misery; and all its enjoyments vanity and vexation of spirit. Though by the bye, those who are called sincere and pious Christians seem to be as desirous of continuing in it, and tasting the good thing's it affords, as the most sensual and worldly-minded sinner. It likewise instils into its followers such a servile fear, and dread of the wrath of heaven, that they can neither lie down at night, nor rise in the morning, without first attempting, by intreaty, flattery, and fair promises, to appease the Divine anger, and persuade the Almighty to permit them to exist in peace. Every accident is a judgement, and a prelude to further punishment. Every misfortune that happens to their neighbours is a warning to them; and they are liable every moment to be cut off by an avenging God, and sent to Hell. While on the one hand, they represent the Deity as their servant, to assist them on every occasion, averting every ill they bring upon themselves, and extricating them from every difficulty and distress they plunge themselves into; on the other he is supposed to be a fierce, revengeful tyrant, delighting in cruelty, punishing his creatures for the very sins which he causes them to commit; and creating numberless millions of immortal souls, that could never have offended him, for the express purpose of tormenting them to all eternity. Thus they are generally miserable through life, in meditating on death and its supposed consequences. The authority of the Bible appears still more doubtful from the absurdities and contradictions it contains; contradictions which all the sophistical ingenuity of reverend divines, with their literal meaning of this text, and spiritual interpretation of that, can never explain or reconcile.