if a man does not obey, he may instantly perish; for to avoid danger is written on the human soul, and as the soul is the work of God, so to avoid danger is as much the command of God, as if it was every moment proclaimed in thunder from heaven. The same may be said of the pain of hunger, which in reality is the voice of the Deity, commanding us to take food: as also of every other pain or uneasiness, which urges us to use our endeavours to get rid of it. Man's natural life, therefore, is a scheme of rewards and punishments; for pleasure or release from pain, is the reward for obeying the dictates of nature; and pain is the contrary.

"What have part of man?"

you to say of the mental or rational

That infancy is a learning of things necessary for the well-being of youth: youth bears the same relation to manhood; and every part of life is the counterpart of another; insomuch that a man slipped into the world with full and mature faculties, would be in danger of perishing, before he learned how to use the things necessary to his existence.

"How do you join natural and revealed religion?"

As every part of this life is a preparation for another, as a perverse and disobedient youth brings on an intemperate and wicked manhood, ruined

constitution and premature death; and on the contrary, virtuous youth is succeeded by flourishing manhood, health, and honourable old age; so is this life, taken as a whole, the prelude to the enjoyment or otherwise of the next. This is natural religion rightly considered.

"What is your inference from a general survey of the moral nature of man?"

That the indulgence in pleasure is so inevitably followed by pain, and the wholesome restraint laid upon our desires for gratification so invariably succeeded by lasting peace and satisfaction, and every part of life so evidently a scheme of rewards and punishments, and every effect depending upon causes, of which very often we can catch but the merest glimpse; that this present scene of things can be but a mere outside, the springs or moving powers are all behind the scenes, and that this world at best is but a mere prelude to a drama of infinitely more action and pathos.

"And what says the votary of natural religion falsely so called to all this?"

That this world is a very good one, would men but content themselves with it; that every man is the artificer of his own fortune, and need never want but through his own sluggishness and mismanagement. And what is this but self-deification; wiping off at one sweep all the hopes of

many a poor helpless mortal, born, in this world, to no other inheritance than poverty, disease, misery, and utter slavery to the capricious will of others, in many instances greatly his inferiors in point of intellect.

66 Have you any other sect or party who advocate the light of nature and the perfectibility of human reason?"

Yes, there are others who say a great deal about these, who do not absolutely deny the immortality of the soul, but who nevertheless will not ungod self. They would go to heaven, but in their own way. They would hold a divided empire with God as a matter of inherent right. Their most distinguishing tenets are a denial of the fallen nature of man, and the reality of sin. They call themselves UNITARIANS; their chief tenets form the subject of the present chapter.

2. "How do you define good and evil?"

Natural good is that which conduces to the well-being of mankind, both individually and in society: and natural evil the contrary. Moral good is what is done in obedience to the known will of God, speaking by revelation or through nature, in the voice of reason: moral evil is what contradicts this known will of God.

"What is good?"

It is God. He is the Creator and the Supporter of all. He is Life and all in all; in him we live, and move, and have our being. He is therefore the substance of all good, the Supreme good and goodness itself.

"How do you account for the origin of evil?” In the first chapter I attempted to body forth an idea of the immensity of the Deity, by a survey of the material universe; and when I consider the immense chasm between man and the Creator in all the attributes, I find reason to conclude that there may be beings between man and the Creator, as much excelling man in faculties and capacities as man excels the meanest insect. In Scripture, we read of thronedoms and principalities; of the angelic hosts. And St. Jude speaks of the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation.' And our Saviour says of the devil, 'he was a liar and murderer from the beginning,' or before the foundation of this world. The inference from such premises, is, that these heavenly hosts not only existed, but had their day of probation, as man now has his, before the creation of this world, and perhaps before the existence of this material universe. Some stood, some fell. Those who fell are permitted a well defined extent of power in their naughtiness, and for a certain period. The Almighty uses them in his infinite wisdom as an instrument with which to sift and try

the hearts of mankind, to excite them to display the latent self-will stubbornness and depravity, that in the end, when this world's affairs shall be wound up, all may stand self-accused and selfconvicted before the eternal Judge, when a due distinction in sin will be made between what a man has committed purely from his own depravity, and what he was irresistibly excited to by the devil.

"Can you more accurately define evil?"

It is the fruit of the devil's wickedness, whereby he instigated man to disobey God, and thus forfeit his perfection and happiness. Man's trial was henceforth in the fruits of his disobedience, namely, a diseased body, annoyed by the elements of heaven, and subject to toil and want. These along with the divine displeasure, the sad fruits of his sins, form the sum total of all evil. Evil, then, when accurately defined, is neither more nor less than the confusion introduced among the divine works by the free-will of God's own creatures, being exercised in opposition to God's own will; which confusion is temporary, and will hereafter be as completely composed, and its effects remedied, as if it had never existed.

"Whence do you derive the knowledge of the origin of evil?"

Not solely from the Bible. Wherever the human race has been found, the notion of an adverse