COMPARATIVE VIEW OF NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

In looking around among the majority of professed believers in revelation, a serious observer is sometimes induced mentally to ask,-" In what manner do these persons differ from mere deists ?" Their character, perhaps, is not immoral: but this single mark is too equivocal to stamp their designation; for natural religion enjoins morality, while health, and comfort, and the hopes of respect in society, all combine to render it eligible.

As yet, therefore, there is nothing exclusively Christian in their deportment." But they occasionally, or even habitually, attend Christian worship." A prudent or time-serving deist may do this, from a regard to decorum, or popular sentiment, or the well-being of society, which he acknowledges could not exist without some show of religion; and Christianity being, he thinks, not worse, and probably better, than others, he adopts it, with all its supposed evils, for the sake of its exterior good effects.

But perhaps the persons in question really believe the articles of the Christian faith-so far is well; yet if their creed be merely an unmeaning recognition, they are still not necessarily unsuitable companions for the deist, who will scarcely wrangle with them for a latent article of belief, so long as they contrive that it shall have no visible effect upon their conduct or their heart.

What then is their real religious system? Why evidently they have none. Religion has never seriously entered into their calculations. So far, however, as their ideas have attained a definite shape, we may perceive a few principles of what is called natural religion, mingled with certain crude, ill-understood notions from revelation, but without any harmony or proportion in the general design.

The persons under consideration, while they do not deny the truths of Christianity, seem to think it somewhat too strict in its requisitions. Though they do not perform, as they admit, all that scripture, strictly construed, may seem to require, they comfort themselves with supposing that they observe with tolerable propriety all that the light of nature suggests, and all therefore that God in reality demands. Their domestic and social relations, we are told, are respectably filled: they are useful and honorable members of the community; so that, upon a general review of their character, they fondly conclude, that whoever may be finally excluded from the joys of heaven, they at least shall not be among the unhappy number.

In reasoning upon the subject of religion, especially with those who acknowledge the truth of revelation, it is not always safe to quit scriptural ground, and to recur to the principles of merely natural theology. If, however, the practice be on any occasion allowable, it is surely so in making the endeavor to convince the professed Christian of the unsuitability of his conduct to the dictates of revealed religion, by showing how completely he falls short even of the imperfect standard of deistical philosophy. For this purpose, it will be endeavored, in the succeeding pages of this essay, to point out a few prominent characteristics of what is called natural religion, with the corresponding duties and obligations of its professor. Deists themselves, though in their own conduct often the most profligate of men, have yet sometimes inculcated in their writings,

almost universally diffused, is more probably the result of reasoning and argument, if not of remote tradition, than of an innate persuasion necessarily coeval with the first dawnings of the human understanding. To vindicate the goodness and justice of God, which may seem to our feeble reason to require that he should not leave himself without witness in the conscience of any intelligent being, it is by no means necessary to suppose the idea of his existence to be a native impression. If such an idea really exists, it matters not, in the present argument, in what manner it was derived.

On the present occasion, therefore, disquisitions of this kind are by no means required; for if a duty has been explicitly admitted by deists themselves, (whatever might be their motive for its admission,) it will equally answer the present purpose,-namely, that of appealing to the consciences of professed Christians,— whether the duty were really suggested by natural reason, or whether, being first disclosed by divine revelation, it appeared so rational, that even those who rejected revelation in general could not refuse to admit that individual precept.

Natural religion, as professed by deists, is founded, in common with revealed, upon a belief of the existence of God. From this primary doctrine spring all our moral obligations; so that nothing can be more important than to keep it ever present to our view.— We cannot, indeed, easily find persons who formally and avowedly deny it; but a considerable degree of practical forgetfulness on the subject is almost universal. For this forgetfulness, the best remedy is indeed the constant perusal of the sacred volume. There we uniformly perceive traces of the Divinity: there his nature, his perfections, his offices are plainly unfolded. We are explicitly taught in what manner he made, and in what manner he governs the world. Scarcely any event is recorded without evident marks of his interposition. The whole volume of revelation, therefore,

is admirably and specifically calculated to remedy that lamentable defect in human nature, by which we are so often inclined to forget what we nevertheless acknowledge, in our deliberate judgment, to be true. He who in theory believes that a God exists, will in scripture find himself constantly reminded of this important fact, and will derive, almost unconsciously, various useful and practical inferences for the regulation of his conduct and his heart, without which his speculative assent would be of no avail.

But, even independently of revelation, merely natural considerations, we might suppose, would keep alive in us this primary article of all religious belief. For are not vestiges of a divine hand stamped upon every object, animate and inanimate, in nature? Is not our own frame, in particular, a frame most "fearfully and wonderfully made," a perpetual evidence to us of the existence of our Creator? Or, if we look from our bodies to our minds, do not we perceive still further proofs of the same indisputable fact?

The first deduction of reason is, that something must have existed from all eternity. We cannot conceive of things having been produced absolutely with

out cause.

Now, whatever exists must have existed either by the necessity of its own nature, or by the agency of some other being. If by the agency of some other being, we may in imagination trace it to its cause, and to that cause go on to apply the same reasoning, till we ultimately arrive at something which we acknowledge must have existed absolutely, and by its own nature from all eternity. This argument fairly considered is irresistible; and the only possible way of seeming to elude its force, is by a sort of half-formed idea that this ultimate cause might have begun to exist in time, and not have been from all eternity. But if it began to exist in time, there must have been some cause of its beginning, some reason why it was produ

ced; which was contrary to the supposition which had supposed that we had gone back as far as possible to the ultimate cause of all.

Imagine that we could retrace the origin of all the oak trees now existing upon the earth to a few thousands; thence to as many hundreds; thence to fifty; thence to ten; and so on, till we came to a single tree, which was the parent of all the rest. It is still as difficult to account for the existence of that single tree as for a million of full-grown oaks. That tree was either eternally existent, or it was produced by some other cause ; for, as nothing can possibly give itself being, the first cause, whatever it be, must necessarily be eternal.

Having thus inferred that something must have been eternal, we are yet still far from having necessarily inferred that this something must have been what we denominate God. We may, however, arrive at this inference by the help of two or three further ideas.

The first cause, whatever it be, must have existed, it appears, from all eternity. How then was it derived? Assuredly not from nothing, without cause, for that is obviously absurd; neither from any external cause, it being by the supposition antecedent to every other cause. It must therefore have been self

existent.

Now, what is included in the idea of self-existence? Not surely self-derivation, for that is evidently an absurdity. Nothing can create itself. Self-existence must therefore imply and include necessary existence; an existence absolutely essential, and which cannot be. denied without an absurdity. The universe cannot be this self-existent being, for we may without absurdity conceive it annihilated; but still there would remain something self-existent and eternal, from which every thing else had its origin.

From such preliminaries moral philosophers have proceeded to establish, even à priori, the essential attributes of the Great First Cause. They have demon