“Robert Hall, with his usual comprehensiveness and truth, has remarked that ‘infidelity is the offspring of corrupt Christianity.’ It is much more successful in the discovery of supposed arguments against the existence of the Deity of the Scriptures, in the perversion of that which is divine, than in its institution and appointed use. Voltaire chose the ruins of human nature, in their most perverted and blighted condition, and Volney chose the ‘ruins’ of human habitations, for the theater on which to display their mighty but evil genius. And they conjured forth the same evil spirit which had instigated or caused the ruin, in each case, to utter a false testimony, in reference both to ruined man and his ruined habitations. These men became the oracles of that falsehood to the world! But it was never the intention of God, that man, or the world fitted up for his habitation, should be in this ruined condition; it is the work of rebellion and sin!—of sin against the greatest displays of love and goodness that were possible, and against the purest and most reasonable law that could be given; of rebellion that was marked by contempt of the universal Sovereign, and of authority enforced by the lightest test of submission. And God has spoken to us, to inform us that he has made provision for the restoration of all men, and that it is his purpose to restore all who become interested in that provision, with the world now in ruins, to a condition which no history but the Bible has made known. “Paine could rail and belie the supernaturalism of the Bible, like an incarnate demon, and then indorse all the supernaturalism of the most stupid pagan mythology, in his patriotic and poetic productions, which he published to the world. And that mind must be strangely out of balance naturally, or wretchedly perverted, which could bow to the authority of Volney’s ‘specter,’ or Paine’s paganism,—the pure creations of fictions and superstition,—and then reject the Bible because it demands faith in that which is not familiar to the senses. “It is generally true that those who become decided skeptics take that most hopeless position, because they have become so depraved or perverted that they feel the want of an infidel theory to afford them a license and quiet, in their chosen course. It was not so with Mr. Miller. In the days of his greatest devotion to deistical sentiments, he desired something better. He had his difficulties with the Bible under its current interpretations, and he tells us what these difficulties were. But a man like him could never be made to believe it consistent or safe to abandon the Bible, unless something more worthy of his trust were first put in its place. And such a condition must secure to that matchless book a certain and permanent supremacy. This was Mr. Miller’s safety.