mington, Delaware. In April, 1815, schools were commenced in the northern liberties of Philadelphia, which in a few months contained five hundred scholars. In 1816, they began to be generally introduced.

The citizens of New-York claim the honour of forming the first society for the regular organization and conduct of Sabbath Schools. The first proposition for the establishment of the Female Union Society for the promotion of Sabbath Schools was made by the benevolent ladies of the several denominations in this city, assembled by public invitation on the 24th of January, 1816; in consequence of which, on the 31st of the same month the society was instituted by the adoption of a constitution, and the appointment of officers; and schools for the instruction of females were immediately opened. On the 12th of February 1816, the gentleman of New-York, assembled by public notice, adopted measures for the formation of a similar society for the education of boys; and on the 26th of that month the New-York Sunday School Union Society was instituted-schools were immediately established; and during the first year after their establishment more than six thousand scholars were entered in the schools. Since which, such schools have been established in all, or most of the principal cities in the United States, as well as in smaller towns and villages'; and it is hoped they will be universal.

I expect to be able to obtain for you a copy of the constitution formed for the first Sabbath School in the United States in 1809, with a view to your publication of it in your next number. Most of the facts I have now stated, with some excellent observations on the management and importance of Sabbath Schools, appeared in a highly respectable periodical publication, [The Christian Spectator,] in the year 1819; but they deserve to be recorded in a place devoted almost entirely to the subject; and therefore I transmit them to you.

I am, Sir, Your, &c.

A FRIEND TO SABBATH SCHOOLS,

ON THE EXIstence, peRSONALITY, AND PRESENCE OF GOD.

It is among the triumphs of truth in this age of inquiry and investigation that theoretical atheism has disappeared in that part of the world denominated Christian. In the course of the last century a few worshippers of stocks and stones, under the title of Nature, or some other fanciful deity, appeared in an enlightened part of Europe; and in a neighbouring nation temples were devoted to imaginary divinities: Reason was deified, and death proclaimed an eternal sleep." This illusion has now vanished. The philosophists have retired from an unequal contest with true philosophy and the superior light of revelation; and no more is heard of Atheists and their theory, except that history says, "the things have been."

Yet there is another form of atheism, in which the enemy of mankind still endeavours to deceive and destroy his votaries. If he cannot persuade men to become professors of the infidel theory, he can find innumerable practitioners of an infidel life; and to live" without God" in the world, is as effectual a security for the population of his kingdom as to believe there is no God.

"If there is such a being," says a respectable writer" as we mean by the term God, it must be a melancholy thing to pass through life, and quit it just as if there were not. What would have been justly thought of you, if you could have been the greatest part of your time in the society of the wisest and best man upon earth, and have acquired no degree of conformity? But then through what defect of infatuation of mind have you been able during all the time you have spent in the presence of a God, to continue even to this hour as clear of all marks and traces of any divine influences having operated on you as if the deity were but a poetical fiction, or an idol in some temple of Asia? Obviously for want of thought concerning him. And what must sound reason pronounce of a mind which in the train of millions of thoughts has never fixed its thought on the supreme reality; never approached, like Moses, to see this great sight.'

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It is with a view to make a stronger impression of the exis

tence, personality, and presence of GoD on the minds and hearts of the readers of this publication, than the mere assent of the understanding is calculated to produce, that we transcribe into these pages the substance of the arguments of the two greatest philosophers of their age-Locke and Berkeley; for the existence of God, as stated by one of the greatest theologians of this, or any other country-President Dwight ;-to which are added a few observations on the personality and presence of the deity, by Dr. Paley, who justly observes, that cases will arise to try the firmness of our most habitual opinions; and that upon these occasions it is a matter of incalculable use to feel our foundation to find a support in argument for what we had taken up upon authority." It is one thing to assent to a proposition of this sort; another, and a very different thing, to have properly imbibed its influence.

Mr. Locke's Argument.-Every man knows, with absolute certainty, that he himself exists. He knows also that he did not always exist, but began to be. It is clearly certain to him that his existence was caused, and not casual; and was produced by a cause adequate to the production. By an adequate cause is invariably intended a cause possessing and exerting an efficacy sufficient to bring any effect to pass. In the present case an adequate cause is one possessing and exerting all the under

standing necessary to contrive, and the power necessary to create such a being as the man in question. This cause is what we are accustomed to call GoD. The understanding necessary to contrive, and the power necessary to create a being compounded of the human soul and body, admit of no limits. He who can contrive, and create such a being, can contrive and create any thing. He who actually contrived and created man, certainly contrived and created all things.

Bishop Berkeley's Argument.—We acknowledge the existence of each other to be unquestionable; and when called upon for the evidence on which this acknowledgment is founded, allege that of our senses: yet it can by no means be affirmed with

We see

truth, that our senses discern immediately any man. indeed a form, and the motions and actions of that form; and we hear a voice, communicating to us the thoughts, emotions, and volitions of an intelligent being. Yet it is intuitively certain, that neither the form, the motions, the actions, the voice, the thoughts, nor the volitions are that intelligent being, or the living, acting, thinking thing, which we call man : On the contrary, they are merely effects, of which that living acting thing, denoted by the word man, is the cause. The existence of the cause, (or in other language, of the man) we conclude from the effects, which he thus produces. In the same manner, and with the like certainty, we discover the existence of God. In the universe without us, and in the little world within us, we perceive a great variety of effects, produced by some cause, adequate to the production. Thus the motions of the heart, the arteries, the veins, the blood, the tongue, the hands, the feet, the perception of the senses, and the actions of the mind; the storm, the lightning, the volcano, and the earthquake; the reviviscence and growth of the vegetable world; the dif fusion of light, and the motions of the planetary system,* are all effects; and effects of a cause adequate to the production. This cause is God; or a being possessed of intelligence and power sufficient to contrive and bring them to pass.

On the Personality of the Deity.-CONTRIVANCE, among other things, proves the personality of the Deity. That which can contrive, which can design, must be a person. These capaci

* God moves the earth which we inhabit at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour. Every star which twinkles in the firmament is a sun, a world of light, surrounded by its own planets. Forty-five thousand such stars have been counted by the aid of the Herschellian Telescope, in so small a part of the heavens, that, supposing this part to be nɔ thicker than the rest, the same telescope would reach at least seventy-five millions in the whole sphere. Beyond this, were we transported to the most distant of the visible stars, we should probably find there a firmament expanding over our heads, studded in the same manner with stars innumerable. How amazing the power and wisdom of HIM who not only created the stars, but "calleth them all by their names."

son.

ties constitute personality; for they imply consciousness and thought. They require that which can perceive an end or purpose, as well as the power of providing means, and of directing them to their end. They require a centre in which perceptions unite, and from which volitions flow; which is mind. The acts of a mind prove the existence of a mind; and in whatever a mind resides is a person. The seat of intellect is a perWe have no authority to limit the properties of mind to any particular corporeal form, or to any particular circumscripion of space. These properties subsist in created nature under a great variety of sensible forms: Also every animated being has a certain portion of space, within which perception and volition are exerted. This sphere may be enlarged to an indefinite extent; may comprehend the universe; and being so imagined may serve to furnish us with as good a notion as we are capable of forming of the immensity of the divine nature, i. e. of a being infinite as well in essence as in power; yet nevertheless a person.

On the Presence of the Deity.-The divine omnipresence stands in natural theology upon this foundation: In every part and place of the universe with which we are acquainted we see the exertion of a power which we believe mediately or immediately to proceed from the Deity. For instance, in what part or point of space that has ever been explored do we not discover attraction? In what regions do we not find light? In what accessible portion of our globe do we not meet with gravity, magnetism, electricity, together with the properties also and powers of organized substances, of vegetable or animated nature? Nay, farther, we may ask what kingdom is there of nature, what corner of space in which there is any thing that can be examined by us, where we do not fall upon contrivance and design.-[Paley.

No agent can act where he is not. As God therefore acts every where, he is every where present. In this agency contrivance and skill, to which no limits can be set, are every where manifested: It is, of course, equally and unanswerably a proof