LETTER OF WILLIAM PITT.

CHRISTIANITY, as taught and practiced by theologians and their adherents, is so accurately described in a letter on superstition, addressed to the people of England, by the celebrated William Pitt, (afterwards Earl of Chatham, and Prime Minister of Great Britain,) that we are induced to give it entire. It was first printed in the London Journal in 1733.ED.

"Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the Fatherless and Widows in their afflictions, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world."

GENTLEMEN, whoever takes a view of the world will find that what the greatest part of mankind have agreed to call religion has been only some outward exercise esteemed sufficient to work a reconciliation with God. It has moved them to build temples, flay victims, offer up sacrifices, to fast and feast, to petition and thank, to laugh and cry, to sing and sigh, by turns; but it has not yet been found sufficient to induce them to break off an armor, to make restitution of ill-gotten wealth, or to bring the passions and appetites to a reasonable subjection. Differ as much as they may in opinion concerning what they ought to believe, or after what manner they are to serve God, as they call it, yet they all agree in gratifying their appetites. The same passions reign eternally in all countries and in all ages: Jew and Mahometan, the Christian and the Pagan, the Tartar and the Indian-all kinds of men who differ in almost every thing else, universally agree with regard to their passions. If there be any difference among them it is this, that the more superstitious the more vicious they always are, and the more they believe the less they practice. This is a melancholy consideration to a good mind; it is a truth, and certainly, above all things, worth our while to inquire into. We will, therefore, probe the wound, and search to the bottom; we will lay the axe to the root of the tree, and show you the true reason why men go on in sinning and repenting, and sinning again, through the whole course of their lives. And the reason is, because they have been taught, most wickedly taught, that religion and virtue are two things absolutely distinct; that the deficiency of the one might be supplied by the sufficiency of the other; and that what you want in virtue, you must make up in religion. But this religion, so dishonorable to God, and so pernicious to men, is worse than Atheism ;

for Atheism, though it takes away one great motive to support virtue in distress, yet it furnishes no man with arguments to be vicious. But superstition, or what the world means by religion, is the greatest possible encouragement to vice, by setting up something as religion which shall atone and commute for the want of virtue. This is establishing iniquity by a law, the highest law; by authority, the highest authority,-that of God himself. We complain of the vices of the world, and of the wickedness of men, without searching into the true cause. It is not because they are wicked by nature, for that is both false and impious; but because, to serve the purposes of their pretended soul-savers, they have been carefully taught that they are wicked by nature, and can not help continuing so. It would have been impossible for men to have been both religious and vicious, had religion been made to consist wherein alone it does consist; and had they been always taught that true religion is the practice of virtue in obedience to the will of God, who presides over all things, and will finally make every man happy who does his duty.

This single opinion in religion, that all things are so well made by the Deity, that virtue is its own reward, and that happiness will ever arise from acting according to the reason of things, or that God, ever wise and good, will provide some extraordinary happiness for those who suffer for virtue's sake, is enough to support a man under all difficulties, to keep him steady to his duty, and to enable him to stand as firm as a rock amidst all the charms of applause, profit, and honor. But this religion of reason, which all men are capable of, has been neglected and condemned, and another set up, the natural consequences of which have puzzled men's understandings, and debauched their morals more than all the lewd poets and atheistical philosophers that ever infested the world; for instead of being taught that religion consists in action, or obedience to the eternal moral law of God, we have been most gravely and venerably told that it consists in the belief of certain opinions which we could form no idea of, or which were contrary to the clear perceptions of our minds, or which had no tendency to make us either wiser or better, or, which is much worse, had a manifest tendency to make us wicked and immoral. And this belief, this impious belief, arising from imposition on one side, and from want of examination on the other, has been called by the sacred name of religion; whereas real and genuine religion consists in knowledge

and obedience. We know there is a God, and know his will, which is, that we should do all the good we can; and we are assured from his perfections that we shall find our own good in so doing.

And what would we have more? Are we, after such inquiry, and in an age full of liberty, children still? and can not we be quiet unless we have holy romances, sacred fables, and traditionary tales to amuse us in an idle hour, and to give rest to our souls when our follies and vices will not suffer us to rest?

You have been taught, indeed, that right belief, or orthodoxy, will, like charity, cover a multitude of sins; but be not deceived. Belief of or mere assent to the truth of propositions upon evidence is not a virtue, nor unbelief a vice. Faith is not a voluntary act, does not depend upon the will; every man must believe or disbelieve, whether he will or not, according as the evidence appears to him. If, therefore, men, however dignified or distinguished, command us to believe, they are guilty of the highest folly and absurdity, because it is out of our power; but if they command us to believe, and annex rewards to belief, and severe penalties to unbelief, then they are most wicked and immoral, because they annex rewards and punishments to what is involuntary, and therefore neither rewardable nor punishable. It appears, then, very plainly unreasonable and unjust to command us to believe any doctrine, good or bad, wise or unwise; but when men command us to believe opinions which have no tendency to promote virtue, but which are allowed to commute or atone for the want of it, then they are arrived at the utmost pitch of impiety,-then is their iniquity full ; then have they finished the misery, and completed the destruction of poor mortal man; by betraying the interest of virtue, they have undermined and sapped the foundation of all human happiness: and how treacherously and dreadfully have they betrayed it! A gift well applied, the chattering of some unintelligible sounds called creeds; an unfeigned assent and consent to whatever the church enjoins, religious worship and consecrated feasts; repenting on a death-bed; pardons rightly sued out; and absolution authoritatively given, have done more towards making and continuing men vicious than all the natural passions and infidelity put together; for infidelity can only take away the supernatural rewards of virtue, but these superstitious opinions and practices have not only turned the scene, and made men lose sight of the natural rewards of it,

but have induced them to think that, were there no hereafter, vice
would be preferable to virtue, and that they increase in happiness
as they increase in wickedness; and this they have been taught in
several religious discourses and sermons delivered by men whose
authority was never doubted, particularly by a late Rev. prelate, I
mean Bishop Atterbury, in his sermon on these words, "If in this
life only be hope, then we are of all men the most miserable,"
where vice and faith ride most lovingly and triumphantly together.
But these doctrines of the natural excellency of vice, the efficacy of
a right belief, the dignity of atonements and propitiations, have, be-
side depriving us of the native beauty and charms of honesty, and
thus cruelly stabbing virtue to the heart, raised and diffused among
men a certain unnatural passion, which we shall call a religious
hatred a hatred constant, deep-rooted, and immortal. All other
passions rise and fall, die and revive again, but this of religious
and pious hatred rises and grows every day stronger upon the
mind as we grow more religious, because we hate for God's sake,
and for the sake of those poor souls, too, who have the misfortune
not to believe as we do; and can we in so good a cause hate too
much? The more thoroughly we hate, the better we are; and the
more mischief we do to the bodies and states of these infidels and
heretics, the more do we show our love to God. This is religious
zeal, and this has been called divinity; but remember, the only
true divinity is humanity.
W. PITT.

THE SINGER.

MELCHAH stood looking on the corpse of his son, and spoke not. At length he broke the silence, and said: " He hath told his tale to the Immortals." Abdiel, the friend of him that was dead, asked him what he meant by the words. The old man, still regarding the dead body, spake as follows:

"Three years ago I fell asleep on the summit of the hill Yarib; and there I dreamed a dream. I thought I lay at the foot of a cliff, near the top of a great mountain; for beneath me were the clouds, and above me the heavens deep and dark. And I heard voices sweet and strong; and I lifted up my eyes, and, lo! over against me, on a rocky slope, some seated, each on his own crag, some

reclining between the fragments, I saw a hundred majestic forms, as of men who had striven and conquered. Then I heard one say: What wouldst thou sing unto us, young man?' A youthful: voice replied, tremblingly: A song which I have made for my singing.' Come, then, and I will lead thee to the hole in the rock enter and sing.' From the assembly came forth one whose countenance was calm unto awfulness, but whose eyes looked in love, mingled with doubt, on the face of a youth whom he led by the hand towards the spot where I lay. The features of the youth I could not discern: either it was the indistinctness of a dream, or I was not permitted to behold them. And, lo! behind me was a great hole in the rock, narrow at the entrance, but deep and wide within; and when I looked into it, I shuddered, for I thought I saw, far down, the glimmer of a star. The youth entered and vanished. His guide strode back to his seat; and I lay in terror near the mouth of the vast cavern. When I looked up once more, I saw all the men leaning forward, with head aside, as if listening intently to a far off sound. I likewise listened; but, though much nearer than they, I heard nothing. But I could see their faces change like waters in a windy and half-cloudy day. Sometimes; though I heard nought, it seemed to me as if one sighed and pray-: ed beside me; and once I heard a clang of music triumphant in hope; but I looked up, and, lo! it was the listeners who stood on their feet and sang. They ceased, sat down, and listened as before. At last one approached me, and I ventured to question him. 'Sir,' I said, 'wilt thou tell me what it means?' And he answered me thus: "The youth desired to sing to the Immortals. It is a law with us that no one shall sing a song who can not be the hero of his tale who can not live the song that he sings; for what right hath he else to devise great things, and to take holy deeds in his mouth. Therefore he enters the cavern where God weaveth the: garments of souls; and there he lives in the forms of his own tale; for God giveth them being that he may be tried. The sighs which thou didst hear were his longings after his own Ideal; and thou didst hear him praying for the Truth he beheld, but could not reach. We sang, because, in his first great battle, he strove well and overcame. We await the next.' A deep sleep seemed to fall upon me; and when I awoke, I saw the Immortals standing with their eyes fixed on the mouth of the cavern. I arose and turned towards it likewise. The youth came forth. His face was worn