held sacred, and their race became gods in perpetuity and by divine right. To touch them was sacrilege; to kill them, death, even in your own defence. If they stung you, you must die; if they infested the land with their numbers and their pollutions, there was no remedy. The nuisance was intolerable, impassive, immortal. Fear, religious horror, disgust, and hatred, heightened the flame of bigotry and intolerance. There was nothing so odious or contemp. tible but it found a sanctuary in the more odious and contemptible perversity of human nature. The barbarous gods of antiquity reigned in contempt of their worshippers! This game was carried on through all the first ages of the world, and is still kept up in many parts of it; and it is impossible to describe the wars, massacres, horrors, miseries, and crimes, to which it gave colour, sanctity, and sway. The idea of a God, beneficent and just, the invisible maker of all things, was abhorrent to their gross, material notions. No, they must have gods of their own making, that they could see and handle; that they knew to be nothing in themselves, but senseless images; and these they daubed over with the gaudy emblems of their own pride and passions, and these they lauded to the skies, and grew fierce, obscene, and franctic, before them, as the representatives of their sordid ignorance and babarism. Truth, Good, were idle names for them, without a meaning. They must have a lie-a palpable, pernicious lie-to pamper their crude, unhallowed conceptions with, and to exercise the untameable fierceness of their wills. The Jews were the only people of antiquity who were withheld from running headlong into this abomination; yet so strong was the propensity in them (from inherent frailty as well as neighbouring examples) that it could only be curbed and kept back by the hands of Omnipotence. At length, reason prevailed over imagination so far, that these brute idols and their altars were overturned. It was thought too much to set up stocks and stones, golden calves and brazen serpents, as bona fide gods and goddesses, which men were to fall down and worship at their peril; and Pope long after summed up the merits of the whole mythologic tribe in a handsome distich : Gods, partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, It was thought a bold stride to divert the course of our imaginations, the overflowings of our enthusiasm, our love of the mighty and the marvellous, from the dead to the living subject; and there we stick. We have got living idols instead of dead ones; and we fancy that they are real, and put faith in them accordingly. Oh, Reason! when will thy long minority expire? It is not now the fashion to make gods of wood, and stone, and brass, but we make kings of common men, and are proud of our handywork. We take a child from his birth, and we agree, when he grows up to be a man, to heap the highest honours of the state upon him, and to pay the most devoted homage to his will. Is there anything in the person 66 any mark, any likelihood," to warrant this sovereign awe and dread? No; he may be little better than an idiot, little short of a madman, and yet he is no less fit for a king. If he can contrive to pass the College of Physicians, the Heralds' College dub him divine. Can we make any given individual taller, or stronger, or wiser than other men, or different in any respect from what nature intended him to be? No, but we can make a king of him! WILLIAM HAZLITT. NOTICE. We It is our intention on Wednesday next, October 3, to have a Grand Festival at the Hall of Science, Camp Field, to commemorate its successful re-opening by "The Man from London" and his friend M. C. Cooke. On that occasion they trust the liberal public of Manchester will attend in force sufficient to prove they are willing to do something more than sympathize with them. Let no one suppose we are making heaps of money; for though the Beacon has been beyond all anticipation successful, heavy but unavoidable expenses connected with its publication have been considerably more than receipts. seek not subscriptions in support of the Beacon, for if unable to stand in its own strength, so far as we are concerned, down it shall tumble. But having fairly established it at great cost of time, labour, and money-having sacrificed to that end profits derived from other sources-we think those who applaud our humble attempt to set free the human mind will see the propriety of doing something more, and aid in giving us the sinews of war by purchasing tickets for this (our first) Festival in commemoration of recent important events. There will be a band of sixteen carefully-selected musicians whose performance will iiself alone be worth the cost of admission-namely, 1s. 6d. for Gentlemen; 1s. for Ladies-to the body of the Hall; and 6d. for Spectators to the Gallery. "The Man from London," who seems destined to play many parts, will officiate as Master of the Ceremonies, Mr. Walter Cooper lending him the light of his countenance. Need more be said to ensure a bumper. Of course there will be as usual a tea party on the first Sunday of October at four o'clock p.m. Mr. Cooper will attend that also, and we cannot for the life of us conclude this "Notice" without paying some tribute to his talents and kindly disposition. We work together admirablybecause he is one of the few public men who can bear a rival near his throne; and there is nothing in our public career, we reflect upon with more pleasure than the measures we had the good fortune to take in introducing him to the Lancashire Reformers. He is to deliver two more Lectures in the Camp Field Hall on Sunday next, 30th Sept.subject for morning at eleven o'clock, "God in History;" for the evening, at half-past six, "Luther, Calvin, and the Herpes of the Protestant Reformation." They are the last he is advertised to deliver in Lancashire, but we hope to secure his valuable assistance for some time longer. Should we do so, intimation of the "great fact" will be published next week. A shrewd lad once met a gentleman walking composedly along one of the streets of New York, and going up to him said rather laconically" Would you like me to give you a sovereign?" "Yes!" replied the grave-looking gentlemen. "Then," continued the boy," do unto others as you would wish others to do unto you!" The gentleman passed on. Published every Saturday, at the Hall of Science, Camp Field and sold by J. R. COOPER, Bridge Street, Manchester, and GEORGE SMITH, Greengate, and 10, Regent Road, Salford. Watson. Queen's Head Passage, London. Printed by GEORGE SMITH, Bookseller and Stationer, Greengate, and 10, Regent Road, Salford. In the next number of this periodical it is proposed to commence a reprint of "The Ghost Seer," a tale by that celebrated German Frederick Schiller, to be completed in about twenty numbers. It is one of the most interesting and instructive Single numbers forwarded to any part of the country, on receipt tales ever written, and worthy of its talented author. of two postage stamps. THE LANCASHIRE BEACON. No. 10.] Responsible Editor,-CHARLES SOUTHWELL, HALL OF SCIENCE, MANCHESTER. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. [PRICE, 1d AN EXTINGUISHER FOR THE "NEW LIGHT." aud that "blind" leaders of the blind are very likely people to precipitate themselves and others into a ditch. "Peter, with first a start and then a wink, Said there's another star gone out, I think. No doubt all this sort of confessing is compatible with belonging "to no particular party"-standing upon "true christian ground," and taking Christ as "guiding star;" but, some how or other, the Christians of Manchester don't seem to have relished the idea of marching after a "cripple" or groping their way to salvation, cheek by jowl, with a “blind" man, and prefer doing" the best they can" without his assistance. This, as Antony says, when viewing the friendly gash made by Brutus, in the many-wounded body of Casar,--was the most unkindest cut of all; and the repudiated "cripple" evidently felt it to be so. We have now the honor of a personal acquaintance with him. He is a Scot, and from details furnished by himself we can speak with some precision as to his feelosophy-his "bold" spirit of adventure in a many years pursuit of" The Man from London," and peculiar modes of turning an honest penny. OUR flickering contemporary, the Christian Beacon, having verified a dark prediction concerning him, we feel bound instantly to put him under a bushel, as promised in a former number, or at once extinguish him. After much reflection this latter course appears to us the best; and so we proceed to adopt it, premising merely that, with Hamlet, we are "cruel only to be kind ;" and, while irresistably impelled to extinguish our contemporary, much pity his hard case. The annals of periodical literature do not furnish a more lamentable one. No sooner did it appear than there was "a certain misunderstanding between the proprietor and his Christian friends;" which" certain misunderstanding" promises to prove a very pretty quarrel." We learn from No. 2, that one William Harris, a doughty young gentleman who challenged us, shabbily went about doing mischief, by putting in a claim to It appears from another of his unlucky confessions connexion with this "New Light." Such "backing" that, like ourselves, he is an old soldier, and upon the the proprietor considered, with Dogberry, most tolera- principle of set a thief to hunt a thief, has followed us ble and not to be endured; and, in rage no good half over the habitable globe. Ever since the advent Christian could exhibit, came out with a funny article of our "whiskers" this Scotch bloodhound has been at headed "Bitter and unprincipled endeavour to crush our heels. He has seen "The Man from London" the Christian Beacon," every word of which shows sowing discord in the camp-perverting the public he is quite right in "candidly confessing" he is taste by wretched writings, lectures, and theatrical per"anything but clever." To be sure, none save hope-formances. Even when "skipping through the mire lessly imbecile readers of the Christian Beacon, need of low life like another will-o'-the-wisp" this faithful such confessing in order to arrive at that fact. But animal followed us. Only when we were in Gaol was open confession is good for the soul, and our ill used he thrown off the scent or disinclined to follow, so that contemporary by writing himself down "anything but his knowledge of us ought to be profound indeed; and clever" has spared us the pains of doing so. it is so past all doubt-so profound as, like a famous pit, to be bottomless. He knows infinitely more about "The Man from London" than the said man does of himself, and though now confessedly a" blind cripple" has seen much more than ever existed and well remembers a variety of circumstances that never occurred. No feelosopher with whom we have acquaintance, either personal or historical, can in these respects be considered equal to Hugh M'Leod, the ill-usedscurvily-treated Editor of the Christian Beacon, whose feelosophy can only be matched by his charity. Both will be placed in a brilliant point of view by the following gems of Christian thought, extracted from his truly Christian periodical: When the Christian Beacon was announced to appear we fondly hoped it would prove "a bright and shining light;" but the very first number brought home to our understanding the unhopeful saying Blessed is he that expecteth little. In his Preliminary Address (a rather clumsy imitation of our own inimitable one) the Editor pathetically lamented his own unfitness to fight the Lord knows who, and helped his readers to the following genuine bit of poetry If the strong will not fight the foe, But, alas! for good intentions! the "bold" Editor has "Mr. Southwell has sold Cod in Billingsgate Market, and the first time he appeared in public as a speaker was on a Fluke Cart in Fish Street Hill. We do not wish to give Mr, Southwell any offence by referring to him in an abusively per Let sonal and unchristian manner.-The Lancashire Beacon is perfectly worthy of its infamous Editor. We wish to speak of him as a man possessing, like ourselves, an immortal soul. This wandering vagabond, this hotch potch genius, this monster atheist is literally a poor wanderer who incessantly travels from place to place doing anything within the compass of the law, to prolong a miserable existence. us cast aside bigotry and prejudice and that horrid unchariexhibit This tableness which some professing Christians little Argus-eyed Tom Thumb, The Man from London, wanders from town to town, and from city to city, before him the legitimate scouts of error, discord. hate and fury rush, scattering abroad confusion and misery. ass, After reading this genuine piece of hotch potch who shall say Hugh M'Leod is not blind as a bat and to the full as much crippled in his brains as Edipus was in his feet. According to report he belongs to the honourable corps of penny show mountebanks, usually denominated Antedeluvian Buffs. We believe such to be the fact for many reasons, but chiefly because all the Antedeluvian Buffers were, or ought to have been, born before the flood. Being such Buffers they have no proper business with post deluvian matters and therefore should not meddle with them. Far better would it have been for the cause of Antichrist if this Antedeluvian Buffer had never attempted its advocacy. The "blind cripple" has set to work upon all such Philistines as ourselves evidently under the flattering hallucination that after the manner of Sampson he could destroy us with the jaw-bone of an What we most fear is, that having found out his mistake and been cruelly snubbed as well as cut by Christian friends, he will at once follow the bad example of Judas by straightway hanging himself. It would grieve us to witness so terrible a catastrophe. We would willingly save him from hanging himself if we could, but fear his case is utterly hopeless: So long as memory holds a seat in our distracted globe we never can forget the appeal to stonyhearted Christian friends he made the other night in his speech at Mather Street Temperance Hall. That speech showed how dreary was the mind and awful the prospects of the speaker. Then it was the bitter confession was wrung from him that the Christian Beacon was far from a paying speculation; that he had worked hard and well for less than nothing, which statement some thought incredible; and that a debt of twelve pounds had been incurred, but not paid, which all thought it ought to be. As a means then of turning an honest penny or raising the wind it is clear the Christian Beacon is a failure. Not wishing to see this poor Buffer plunged deeper and deeper into debt, and being ill-inclined to see him commit suicide, we resolve to extinguish him in the gentlest possible man ner. He is one of those Buffers who while too cunniug by half for other people's interest are not half cunning enough for their own, and justify the saying of Coleridge that a knave is merely a fool with a circumbendibus. It appears from the speech above referred to that ten years ago he was a Wesleyan Preacher engaged in searching after the unsearchable riches of Christ. Whether he distinguished himself in that line we cannot say, but judge not, as he is neither cunning enough to be an imposter nor simple enough to be a Wesleyan. Pope Boniface described the celebrated Choiseul as a madman with a strong understanding. We should be glad to pay Hugh M'Leod the same compliment if we could consistently; but truth forbids us saying anything so false as that he is a madman with a strong understanding. We can, however, conscientiously say of him as an Irish grocer we formerly knew said of his scapegrace son-He is a d- -d fool, but not deficient of sense. Our experience of editorial stupidity has been great, but the Antedeluvian "New Light" is beyond all question the dullest specimen of spiritual dark lanthornism we ever beheld. Who but some madman with a weak understanding would ever have expected to DAMAGE" Infidelity" by first making an Infidel of Jeremy Bentham, and then quoting, for Christian edification, the follow. ing (last) words uttered by that great philosopher :"I feel that I am dying; our care must be to minimize the pain. Do not let any of the servants come into the room, and keep away the youths; it will be distressing to them and they can be of no service; yet I must not be alone.-You will remain with me and you alone, and then we shall reduce the pain to the least possible amount." We have it on classical authority that the spear of Achilles healed the wound it made.-The pen of our blind cripple of an editor has the same remarkable property, and with such "greased lightning" rapidity is the wound it makes completely healed that the sufferer is quite unconscious of being wonnded at all. Satire should, like a polished razor kecn, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen. But so keen is the elge of that satire indulged in by the Buffer it is our painful duty to extinguish that it cannot be felt or seen at all, and though antedeluvians might understand it, we cannot. We fear that he is fond of toddy, and, when under its inspiration, fancies he is a mental Sampson, who, after the fashion of him who carried away the Gates of Gaza, with the jaw-bone of an ass, can slay whole armies of modern Philistines. When we consider him and his twin brother in misfortunes, book Cheap Joseph, of Market-st., we cannot but think them humble instruments in the providential work of bringing false Christianity iuto contempt. Sure such a pair was never seen So aptly formed to meet by Nature. Had they earlier distinguished themselves as they have lately done, we should have concluded at once that the amusing characters of Cheap John and his friend the Kinchin, who figure in Buckstone's Flowers of the Forest, were suggested to that author by Cheap Joseph and his friend the antedeluvian buffer, who of all Kinchins is the most miserable. These two unfortunate gentlemen, have not like their prototypes Wright and Paul Bedford, been put into the stocks for snapping up unconsidered trifles and otherwise making free with what don't belong to them; but many "Christian friends" would be glad to see them thereamong others the certain William Harris, who this antedeluvian specimen of Kinchinism says, "deserves not the name of a man." Great is our regret that the Christian Beacon is as Dogberry phrases it, "doomed to redemption." Most sincerely we wish it had been conducted by some man of ability who could afford to keep a conscience, not an antedeluvian buffer and penniless adventurer who "most ignorant of what he is most assured" attempts to pass off the bad money of pairfactly rediclus falsehoods and gross personal vituperation as the sterling coin of Christian truth. Every sound Christian will rejoice to find the ingredients of the poisoned chalice returned to the lips of this wretched slanderer, and His little flery particle Fairly snuffed out by a leading article. BRUNO. GIORDANO BRUNO OF JORDANUS BRUNUS was born at Nola, in the kingdom of Naples. Very little is known of his parents, or of the early portion of his life, until in 1582, when he began to doubt the truth of the Papistical doctrine of transubstantiation, and soon afterwards of the virginity of the Virgin Mary, and other essentials of the Roman Catholic Faith. This was the signal for his persecution, and until the perse cution commenced he was apparently unknown. The fury of his persecutors caused him to retire to Geneva, where he remained two years, during which time he made himself acquainted with the tenets of the followers of Calvin, but expressing his disapproval thereof he was expelled thence, and sought a refuge at Lyons. Afterwards he went to Thoulouse and Paris, in the latter of which places he was made professor extraordinary, because ordinary professors were compelled to assist at mass. From this place he journied to London, where he resided for two years with the French Ambassador, and was well received by Queen Elizabeth, and the most learned and influential men of the court. Amongst the principal of his friends here were Sir Philip Sydney, and Sir Foulkes Greville, and it was at the request of the former of these gentlemen that, during his stay in England he wrote and published his work, entitled 'Spaccio della Bestia Triumphante, which appeared in 1584, dedicated to Sir Philip, and to which the celebrated Spectator referred in No. 389, published 17th of May, 1722, in which he states that a copy was sold in London for thirty pounds. "It was written." says the journalist named," by one Jordanus Brunus, a professed atheist, with a design to depreciate religion, every one was apt to fancy from the extravagant price it bore, that there must be something in it very formidable. I must confess that happening to get a sight of one of them myself, I could not forbear perusing it with this apprehension, but found there was so very little danger in it that I shall venture to give my readers a fair account of the whole plan upon which this wonderful treatise is built." Hereupon follows a statement of contents which evidently proves that the polite editor of the Spectator could not comprehend what he had read, as we shall convince our readers by giving his analysis, and so much as is necessary of Bruno's work as soon as our space will permit. childish terror of death being extinct, we know one part of the felicity which our contemplation brings according to the fundamental maxims of our philosophy, in as much as it removes the dark veil of the idle notion concerning hell and the greedy Charon, which notion robs us of and poisons the sweetest pleasures of life." The celebrated Des Cartes is charged by some with having borrowed his philosophy from the philosophical works of Bruno, and whilst honoured, the source from whence he drew so largely is contemned. Arrived at Venice, Bruno was apprehended by the Inquisition, tried and convicted. Forty days was given him to deliberate, and he was reccommended to make the best use of that time and to recant. At the end of that period he was brought up again, but remaining still firm and resolved to continue in his heretical opinions, forty days more were given to him with an injunction to embrace the faith. The time expired again, and on his being brought up unchanged and firm, sentence was passed upon him, that he should be convinced of his errors by being burnt at the stake. Bruno knelt according to custom whilst the sentence was being past, and when it was finished he rose from his knees, and casting a piercing glance at his judges, said in a firm voiceYou are more terrified than I am at the sentence you have pronounced against me. This sentence was passed on the 9th February, 1600, and on the 17th of the same month he was led from his cell to the Campus Flore, the place of execution. A crucifix was presented to him at the point of death, but he rejected it in a scornful manner, and was burut adhering to the opinions he had held and promulgated during his life. After this catastrophe it was attempted to be proved that he died a Lutheran, but it appears clearly from a letter of Scioppius' that, at the period at which the sentence of death was executed upon, Bruno, the Lutherans were safe from persecution even at Rome. Bruno was a man of great wit, extensive erudition, and powerful intellect. He was fearless and undaunted in the midst of continual persecution, and his moral character has never been called in question. The manner of his death was equally honorable with his life. He died the death of a calm sage, and a bold philosopher, denying the power of the priests to hold and interpret the truth and will of God. CONFESSIONS OF A FREETHINKER. CHAPTER IV. PRIMITIVE DOUBTS. The Christian who first busied himself about my Whilst at Paris he composed and published De Umbris Idearum, dated, 1582. Cantus Circæus, dated 1583 and De Compendiosa Architectura. From England he went to Wittemberg, thence to Prague, where he printed De Specierum Scrutinis, dated 1588, and thence to several other towns in Germany, where he openly avowed his principles. He afterwards took a tour to Venice, where he published his work, De la Causa, Principio et Uno, in the preface to which he says:"A truly heroic fortitude was necessary to keep me from subjecting myself, from dispairing and yielding to the rapid torrent of criminal impostures with which I was vigorously attacked by the envy of the ignorant. the presumption of cavillers, the calumny of the malevolent, the murmurs of servants, the whispers of hirelings, the contradictions of familiars, the suspicions of fools, the scruples of tale bearers, the zeal of hypo-"spiritual welfare" was the cause of my primitive crites, the hatred of barbarians, the fury of the mob, the mad rage of the common people, the complaints of the bruised and the voice of the chastised:" and the ground of all this persecution was the difference between his opinions and those of the rest of the world; because he dared to say that he believed there were a great number of worlds, and all of them eternal, that none but the Jews descended from Adam and Eve, and that the rest of mankind sprung from a race of men whom God had created a long time before that all the miracles of Moses were the effect of magic, and that the only reason why they surpassed those of other magicians was, because he had made greater progress than they in the art. That he himself had forged the laws he gave to the Israelites, and that the sacred writings are but a dream. In addition to which his horror at the current notions of hell, in which men were to be tortured after death, as he says in one of his works, the Second dialogue in his De la Causa, Principio et Uno,-"The vain and doubts respecting religious systems. With best intentions he produced worst results. This innocent criminal was a Finisher in the firm of Broadwood and Sons, where I believe he is still employed and still respected as a conscientiously religious and upright man. No one questioned his honesty though many had strange misgivings as to his intellect, which, truth to tell, was not of the brightest kind. Fond of talking about religion he was frequently engaged in discussions with fellow workmen of the incredulous school who, carrying too many guns for poor "James,' battered him unmercifully. I felt a peculiarly strong regard for him, and day after day stood by his bench and attentively listened to his pious exhortations. Unluckily he did not stop with the attempt to talk me into his way of thinking, but urged me to read several of his books. One of them was a volume of Sermons by the celebrated Timothy Dwight, whose masterly and pious eloquence has long been the theme of christian tongues. To a single passage of that remarkable book I owe my first sceptical thought concerning the superstitious systems priests and their abettors have the impudence to call pure Christianity. After enlarging upon the magnificence of Nature, and the power of Deity as manifested in its creation and preservation, he exclaims with startling earnestness :How vain then must be all resistance to God! But the very power, the will, the wish to resist cannot rise into being unless supplied and supported by Him." dulity, like David, has slain its tens of thousands. Human nature has rather erred in believing too much than too little. Rather than not believe or pretend to believe enough, an overwhelming majority of us make a merit of believing we believe a host of doctrines altogether incredible because repugnant to natural sense and experience. Men, for example may say they believe and may even believe they believe every one of the Thirty-nine Articles, but that they actually do believe in them, only simpletons will allow. We are as apt to impose on ourselves as others, and the credu. lous mortals who say they believe the Thirty-nine Articles grossly impose upon themselves. How shall any man, even though he have credulity fifty times Christian, believe in a clock with the remarkable capacity of striking less than one? Or what in point of glaring absurdity is fully equal; an immense Being with neither body, nor parts, nor passions—yet every stickler for the Thirty-nine Articles professes to believe this most absurd, incomprehensible, and therefore unbelievable proposition, for the second of those articles declares God a being without body, parts, or passions. Up to the period when antagonism to false religion, was fairly aroused within me by the strange, though orthcdox, doctrine of Timothy Dwight, I used the term God, as all children do, without attaching to it any definite signification. If it suggested anything it was the figure of a man, with a long gray beard, sitting somewhere in the clouds amidst a crowd of trumpet On coming to these words, so deeply significant, I paused and in terrified astonishment literally gasped for breath. The shock was so great that for a time reason seemed to have abandoned her seat, leaving me a prey to conflicting and most painful emotions. "What," thought I, after recovering my presence of mind, "is it indeed true that the power, the will, the wish to resist God is supplied and supported by himself? And can it be true that he will eternally punish for a resistance himself has caused? Reason at once rejected the monstrous supposition, but with fear and trembling, I went to my Mentor in the hope that he would put in a truthful light what ap peared to me so outrageously blasphemous. But vain hope! he could only make visible the darkness in which my soul was plunged. He talked to be sure about the incomprehensibility of God-his right to do what he liked without regard to principles we in our ignorance call just-his desire to save sinners through Christ and him crucified, in whom all might believe if so disposed. For an hour, by the shop clock, he en-blowing human-looking winged messengers, on whose larged on the efficacy of prayer and Presbyterian chapel going, as a surest cure for that desolating scepticism he shrewdly suspected had taken possession of me. But he wasted breath. As well might Mohammed have expected to talk the mountain out of its place as he to talk me out of my sudden but profound conviction, that a God who caused men to sin could not consistently be angry with or punish them for their sinfulness. Though only twelve years old, and less than half informed upon matters of logic or of faith, my natural sense detected the blasphemous absurdity of a belief which reduced God, in point of wisdom, to a level lower than his grace the-cannot-Ido-what-I-will-with-my-own-Duke of Newcastle, and in point of tyrannous cruelty infinitely lower than Henry the Eighth, Caligula, or Nero. Though so young it seemed to me most wickedly blasphemous to assume that divine justice is based upon principles diametrically opposed to human justice, and flying to the incomprensibility of God as a sort of refuge for destitute logic, appeared a decent way of retreating from the whole question. Here, then was I, a raw, undisciplined, curious, selfwill'd boy, in my frail reasoning bark cast on a shoreless ocean of doubt, without pilot to steer, or star to guide my course. But few people are content to rest in scepticism. Rosseau thought it a state of mind altogether intolerable. He argues that men will rather embrace error than oscillate between contending opinions without choosing any. To a certainty the majority of pious thinkers have an insuperable aversion for scepticism. Unlike that philosopher who considered the road to wisdom was through the portals of doubt, they anathematize doubters as if they were the devil's favorite children. The late Sir Walter Scott, in his Robert of Paris, endeavours to make out a case against doubters, by declaring that incredulity not credulity has been the prime cause of error, and the crimes to which enior gives birth. But such a conclusion belongs to the romance of philosophy and will hardly bear the test of experience as developed in the sober facts of history. They demonstrate that a tendency to blind faith in fictions has been the plague spot and damning curse of our race, and that where incredulity, like Saul, has slain its thousands, cre head sat a kingly crown. The god of a child is always very like his father, and my father had he suffered his beard to grow, would "on high" surrounded by angelic beings have "passed muster "as the God of my childish idolatry. Abstract reasonings on the nature of anything are beyond the capacity of mere children, and yet we talk to children about an abstract Being called God, who is without body, parts, or passions. Surely this appears something like giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.' 66 was What to to think of such a Being would puzzle the cleverest Philadelphia lawyer, and I hope therefore that no good christian will consign me to the bottomless pit, for confessing that until my reasoning powers were shocked into alarming activity by the hideous nakedness of Dr. Dwight's doctrine, all my notions about God were decidedly material, and I am afraid that many children of much larger growth have no wiser ones. Not long since while walking in the splendid Cathedral at Rouen, my attention drawn to a picture representing Divinity with a shaven crown on a flying visit to a crowd of monks, who stood with open arms ready to graciously receive the creator of heaven and earth. This kind of Deity it must be allowed is very complimentary to monks in obliging them so far as to have his crown shaven, but to any other than Roman Catholic Christians he is represented less spiritually than all respectable deities ought to be. In point of faet all Christians worship amplications of themselves, for the simple reason that spirit is not properly an object, and as such can never be worshipped in spirit and in truth. In less than six months after reading James Henderson's imprudently lent book, I made that and many other valuable discoveries. During that six months I usually read seven, sometimes eight hours out of every twenty-four, I panted after knowledge as harts do after waterbrooks. Paley's Evidences and Natural Theology were read with admiration; Laws' Serious Call, and scores of similar works, with disgust. Though unconvinced by Paley's Reasoning, I admired his singular tact and illustrative ability. Perhaps no author has ever equalled Paley in the art of cheating people into acquiescence with false sophistical principles by boldly assuming their truth, and raising |