inferences too plain for the subterfuges of sophistry-too strong for even sectarian prejudices-and too stubborn for either denial or evasion. Amidst all the sectarian doctrines which pervade the world-amidst the vast and complicated variety of religious opinions diffused among mankind, opinions which have led to martyrdom for the support of nearly every cause—what is he to believe who seeks order among such chaos; truth amongst such contradictions; and safety among bitter and reciprocal denunciations of vengeance against unbelief, and even against dissension in opinion? These are some of the difficulties I experience in the selection and adoption of any particular code of Christian faith; these are some of the prominent reasons why I have hitherto been, and still am compelled, though reluctantly, to reject all the merely sectarian codes with which I have become acquainted. To me they seem to stand on too narrow and exclusive, not to say uncharitable and misanthropic foundations, to embrace that enlarged and boundless beneficence of Heaven, which we see everywhere displayed, for the benefit of man, in the visible universe! No one of them, that I am acquainted with, can be so charitably extended as to embrace the present and future destinies of the whole human race; and I cannot, if I even desired it, subscribe to the truth of any religious creed which comes short of this. Individuals and nations, of whatever country or remote climate, seem to me to be equally the offspring of one great and universal Parent; equally the objects of attention and tenderness with that Parent, throughout every region of the habitable globe. He has surely bestowed on the whole race of man the same physical organization, the same susceptibilities of pain and pleasure, of happiness and misery; and although he seems to have imposed religious conditions on the whole human race, as well as moral ones, which carry with them penalties for disobedience, of no ordinary magnitude; yet even these religious conditions and moral penalties, it would seem to me, are certainly regulated not by caprice and partiality, but by principles of reason and unerring justice! But, sir, I have other objections to mere sectarian codes. It seems to me that the proofs usually adduced in support of them are founded on the mere antiquity of certain dogmas, generated in the night of time, and the infancy of nations; on the prejudices of early precept and example, which always substitute mere authority for what ought to be rational evidence; on forced constructions of detached portions of Scripture; and, if I may be allowed the negative expression, on the want of that moral and intellectual intrepidity, possessed indeed by few, which leads to profound investigation, not subsequently, but anterior to the adoption of opinions. With me, in religion, as in politics, and in the words of the great patriot, Sidney," Implicit faith belongs to fools; truth is comprehended by examining proofs, as the foundation of principles." No man can believe what he pleases, or even what he wishes; I mean no rational and unprejudiced man. No man can believe, if his belief be rational, that two and two make five ; that a straight line occupies the longest distance between two points; or that the sun and moon appear triangular. A man, it seems to me, must believe according to the strength of the evidence presented to his reasoning powers: and, I think, it would be as difficult for an unprejudiced and intelligent man to avoid believing on sufficient evidence, as it would be for him to believe implicitly without any evidence at all. In fact, I know of no such thing as faith, by which I here mean entire belief, that is not founded on testimony calculated to carry irresistible conviction to the human mind; and, until the principles of narrow and exclusive sectarianism are better supported than I think they are at present, I must continue to defer a selection from among them of any particular code. I wish to witness the establishment or adoption of some religious faith and practice, on rational, charitable, and beneficent foundations-capable of embracing the whole human race, and of doing ample justice to those sublime attributes of the Deity, which we denominate wisdom, justice, mercy, divine love of the human family! Exclusive partialities cannot comport with the wisdom, the justice, and the all-absorbing love of the Almighty, for his feeble and erring creature, man! But it is time to conclude this portion of my letter:-and I will now state to you, with the same candour hitherto observed, my serious and solemn objections to the Mosaical account of the Creation, as it appears in the first book of Genesis, according to the present translation of the Bible. 66 Say first of God above, or man below What can we reason, but from what we know?" On every side of Him, in the planetary system, in the depths of the ocean, and on the whole surface of the solid and habitable globe, man beholds an infinite assemblage of objects, which he denominates the physical universe. He sees the great planetary system regulated by laws which never deviate; he distinguishes that the unfathomable depths of the ocean are pervaded by acquatic animals, and even growths of vegetations, which no where else subsist, except in that unstable and tumultuous element, and that they are all subject to the same invariable laws; he sees the solid domains of the whole globe, embracing all the parallels of latitude and longitude, and every temperature of climate, from the frozen atmosphere of the poles to the burning rigours of the equatorial regions, covered with an infinity of vegetable growths, suited to those varied temperatures, and with almost countless races of animals, calculated also to exist under all those varied temperatures, and that all of them are subject to the supreme domination of equally immutable laws. Then, turning an eye of curiosity and wonder on himself, he beholds a frame exqusitely and astonishingly organised— physical senses fitted for the examination and rigid scrutiny of all objects which present themselves-and intellectual powers calculated to hold dominion over everything around him; and he easily distinguishes that this frame and its exquisite organic structures, these physical senses and their capacities, and these intellectual powers, so varied and extensive in their genius and energies, are all subject to the influence and government of laws, equally unchangeable, and equally beyond his controul! Hence, in my opinion, sir, first arose among mankind the idea of a God, self-dependent and supreme-the origin of all things-the great Creator of the Universe. The immense, and, to us, unbounded machinery of the physical universe, the steady and unerring revolutions of the great planetary system, which produce for man the changes of the seasons; the periods of seed-time and harvest, and all the vast phenomena of vegetable life; the unchangeable relations or laws which pervade and regulate the great system of nature, through all her departments of vegetable, animal, and intellectual existence-in fact, all objects of which the human mind can take cognizance, demonstrate conclusively to the rational faculties of man, and to the exercise of his best judgment, not only the existence of a God, autocratical and supreme, but also that this great being must possess infinity of wisdom, omnipotence of power, and perfection of design:-infinity of wisdom to plan; omnipotence of power to create and sustain; and unerring perfection of design to produce and perpetuate everlasting harmony, not only in the great system of nature, measurably known to us, but in the sublime, and, to us, incomprehensible evolutions of a universe without bounds! "That very law* which moulds a tear, But, to be a little less general:-We distinguish the glory of God in the visible beauties, and magnificent splendours of created nature; his omnipotent power in the support and perpetuation of all the departments of animated nature known to us from the life and organization of the vegetable of the fields and woods, up to the complicated organization, and superior vitality of man: his infinity of wisdom in the fitness or co-aptation of each portion of his great works, however minute, to all we can comprehend of those works: and we can certainly be at no loss to observe infinite perfection of design in the natural objects cognizable by our senses, our understandings, and our reasoning powers, so far as the grand design of creation and providence can be developed by the feeble and limited energies of man. The truth is, sir, that these attributes of an almighty and unerring God, are as visible in the analysis of a physical atom, or even the chemical compounds of a rock, as in the complicated and exquisite structure and vitality of the human frame- or the immutable and infinitely harmonious laws which regulate the great movements of the universe! Amidst this great and glorious assemblage of natural objects, subjected to the same invariable and infinitely harmonious laws, man seems to stand conspicuous and alone. He is the only being, absoIntely known to himself, capable of raising his contemplations to the Deity, and of experiencing a sentiment of awe, veneration, and devotional love for the unknown author of his existence-the only being in creation, known to his perceptive and rational powers, whose mental capacities are capable of embracing the wide horizon of physical nature and her laws--and of experiencing a sublime and comprehensive sentiment of immortality. With all these immense capacities and powers, and endowed with sensitive and mental energies, which have laid open to his genius for enterprise the geography of the whole globe which he inhabits; which have disclosed to him the vast, and apparently, unlimited boundaries of the oceans and the land, and conducted * Gravity. him through trackless and tumultuous seas, to distant and unknown coasts, scarcely yet found in delineation on the mariner's chart; which have taught him to measure and calculate, by the aid of the magnetic needle, the unerring principles of mathematics, and the science of numbers, not only the solid surface of the globe he inhabits, but the relative distances and locations of all the planetary objects embraced by the great science of astronomy; which have ennabled him, by the subduing and destructive power of his warlike inventions, to subjugate or destroy, and hold undivided dominion over all the inferior orders of animated nature; which have taught him the exercise and principles of all the mechanical arts, and enabled him to clothe his body with attire, to shield him from the frosts and snows of winter, and the sultry and oppressive heats of summer; to raise sheds to cover, and ramparts to defend himself against his natural enemies-in fine, to conquer nearly all the objects which stand in the way of his enjoyments and happiness. Can it be possible, sir, that man, thus nobly endowed, and thus most exquisitely organised, physically and intellectually, should have been placed by his Maker in a garden, merely "to dress it, and to keep it?" "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And the Lord took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it." The laws of nature, at least to me, sir, speak in a voice not easily to be misunderstood. Our first parents must have been formed physically, morally, and mentally, precisely like ourselves, or I think they could not have been our progenitors: throughout all animated existence, as far as I can judge, like produces like. If they were invested with organic procreative powers, those endowments could not have been bestowed in vain: to presume otherwise would be virtually to impeach infinite wisdom with folly: if given, they were to be exercised--" And God said to them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it," &c.—and if exercised, the difficulty with me is.- Was the garden of Eden capacious and productive enough to afford ample room for, and to furnish with subsistence, the whole race of Adam? But, even suppose that the garden of tiden were made to embrace the whole habitable surface of the globe, would even that vast domain have afforded space and subsistence for such a race as must have now been in existence, had not Adam fallen, and the curse of death been denounced against the countless myriads of his race? If Adain was not intended to procreate his species, his prolific energies must have been bestowed in vain, and the whole inhabitable globe, except the small space occupied by himself and his partner, who must also have been doomed to perpetual barrenness, must have remained a wild and uncultivated desert, and left eternally to the undivided empire of inferior animals. But this state of things, according to the Bible itself, seems not to have been the intention of the Creator-for Adam and Eve were commanded, even previously to their fall, as well as I can understand the requisition, to "increase and multiply, and to replenish the earth, and to subdue it." In fine, the whole of my difficulties respecting the correctness of the Mosaical account of creation, may be comprised in the following queries:-Was it intended by the Almighty Creator that our first parents, and their innumerable progeny, were to confine their whole attention and wonderful energies merely to the cultivation and dressing of a garden? Was that garden circumscribed to definite and insurmountable bounds? or were its environs the ends of the earth, the circumference of the whole globe? In either case, and supposing that man had not fallen, by which fall alone we are taught that death came into the world, would there at this day have been room for the numerous race of our first parents in the garden, or even on the surface of the globe? If, on the contrary, those original parents were not invested with procreative powers, or if endowed therewith, were doomed to perpetual barrenness, was the earth for ever to continue an uncultivated wilderness, the undisputed and undivided empire of wild beasts? Did the introduction of death into the world, by the fall of man, change the original conformation of the jaws of carnivorous animals, and make the earth, and the rivers, and the oceans of the globe, theatres of robbery, carnage, and bloodshed? In fine, did the original sin of Adam make the earth bring forth thorns, and briars, and noxious weeds—many, if not all of which, are calculated for the cure of the diseases of our race? And did that original sin produce all the physical, moral, and intellectual disorders, which we everywhere distinguish among mankind? This communication has been made longer than at first intended; but, because I consider the subjects important which it embraces, and because it was written in obedience to the request of several of your readers, and my own ardent wish for information, I trust you will excuse some prolixity. With due respect and consideration, I am, sir, your obedient CHARLES CASSEDY. servant, LETTER OF A. CAMPBELL IN REPLY. NO. I. RESPECTED SIR.-My desire to present entire, in one number, your very respectful and dignified communication of the 29th October, precluded my offering any remarks upon it. I could not, with due regard to the subjects on hand and the character of this periodical, engross more of its pages on one occasion, on a subject not so immediately in the direct range of the present topics of discussion, otherwise, I should have accompanied your letter with a partial reply. Even now I must divide my reply into a series of numbers, that I may afford room for other subjects of high consideration. Your request to the contrary alone prevents me from referring you to my debate with Mr. Owen, for a rational consideration of some of the more prominent difficulties suggested in your letter. In that volume, it appears to me, your objections are fully considered, with the exception of, perhaps, one; and that is partially noticed. Sorry to see one so gifted as yourself-one whose heart is so susceptible of refined and exalted sentiments of Christianity-and whose |