larged their hearts' with the knowledge and belief of his word, they will not very vigorously run the way of his commandments.' Until they have acquired that faith, without which it is impossible to please God,' they will not attain that holiness, without

which no man can see him.'

tute for an useful life, is indispensably necessary to its acceptance with God. The Gospel never offers to make religion supercede morality, but every where clearly proves that morality is not the whole of religion. Piety is not only necessary as a means, but is itself a most important end. It is not only the best principle of moral conduct, but is an indispensable and absolute duty in itself. It is not only the highest motive to the practice of virtue, but is a prior obligation, and absolutely necessary, even when detached from its immediate influence on outward actions. Religion will survive all the virtues of which it is the source; for we shall be living in the noblest exercises of piety when we shall have no objects on which to exercise many human virtues. When there will be no distress to be relieved, no injuries to be forgiven, no evil habits to be subdued, there will be a Creator to be blessed and adored, a Redeemer to be loved and praised.

And indeed if God has thought fit to make the Gospel an instrument of salvation, we must own the necessity of receiving it as a divine institution, before it is likely to operate very effectually on the human conduct The great Creator, if we may judge by analogy from natural things, is so just and wise an economist, that he always adapts, with the most accurate precision, the instrument to the work; and never lavishes more means than are necessary to accomplish the proposed end. If therefore Christianity had been intended for nothing more than a mere system of ethics, such a system surely might have been produced at an infinitely less expense. The long chain of prophecy, the suc To conclude, a real Christian is not such cession of miracles, the labours of apostles, merely by habit, profession, or education; the blood of the saints, to say nothing of the he is not a Christian in order to acquit his great costly sacrifice which the Gospel re- sponsors of the engagements they entered into cords, might surely have been spared Les-in his name; but he is one who has embracsons of mere human virtue might have been delivered by some suitable instrument of human wisdom, strengthened by the visible authority of human power. A bare system of morals might have been communicated to mankind with a more reasonable prospect of advantage, by means not so repugnant to human pride. A mere scheme of conduct might have been delivered with far greater probability of the success of its reception by Antoninus the emperor, or Plato the philosopher, than by Paul the tent-maker, or Peter to fisherman.

Christianity, then, must be embraced entirely, if it be received at all. It must be taken without mutilation, as a perfect scheme, in the way in which God has been pleased to reveal it. It must be accepted, not as exhibiting beautiful parts, but as presenting one consummate whole, of which the perfection arises from coherence and dependence, from relation and consistency. Its power will be weakened, and its energy destroyed, if every caviller pulls out a pin, or obstructs a spring with the presumptuous view of new moddelling the Divine work, and making it go to his own mind. There must be no breaking the system into portions of which we are at liberty to choose one and reject another. There is no separating the evidences from the doctrines, the doctrines from the precepts, belief from obedience, morality from piety, the love of our neighbour from the love of God. If we allow Christianity to be any thing, we must allow it to be every thing if we allow the Divine Author to be indeed unto us wisdom and righteousness,' he must be also 'sanctification and redemption.'

·

ed Christianity from a conviction of its truth, and an experience of its excellence. He is not only confident in matters of faith by evidences suggested to his understanding, or reasons which correspond to his inquiries; but all these evidences of truth, all these principles of goodness are working into his heart, and exhibit themselves in his practice. He sees so much of the body of the great truths and fundamental points of religion, that he has a satisfactory trust in those lesser branches which ramify to infinity from the parent stock; though he may not individually and completely comprehend them all. He is so powerfully convinced of the general truth, and so deeply impressed by the general spirit of the Gospel, that he is not startled by every little difficulty; he is not staggered by every hard saying. Those depths of mystery which surpass his understanding do not shake his faith, and this, not because he is credulous, and given to take things upon trust, but because, knowing that his foundations are right, he sees how one truth of Scripture supports another like the bearings of a geometrical building; because he sees the aspect one doctrine has upon another; because he sees the consistency of each with the rest, and the place, order, and relation of all. The real Christian by no means rejects reason from his religion; so far from it, he most carefully exercises it in furnishing his mind with all the evidences of its truth. But he does not stop here. Christianity furnishes him with a living principle of action, with the vital influences of the holy spirit, which, while it enlightens his faculties, rectifies his will, turns his knowledge into practice, sanctifies his heart, changes his habits, and proves that when faithfully received, the word of truth is life indeed, and is spirit indeed!'

REMARKS ON THE SPEECH OF M. DUPONT.

MADE IN THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF FRANCE,

ON THE SUBJECTS OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION.

A PREFATORY ADDRESS

TO THE LADIES, &C. OF GREAT BRITAIN,-IN BEHALF OF THE FRENCH EMIGRANT CLERGY. Ir it be allowed that there may arise oc- long accustomed to bestow the necessaries casions so extraordinary that all the lesser he is now reduced to solicit. motives of delicacy ought to vanish before them, it is presumed that the present emer gency will be considered as presenting one of those occasions, and will in some measure justify the hardiness of this address from a private individual, who, stimulated by the urgency of the case, sacrifices inferior considerations to the ardent desire of raising further supplies towards relieving a distress as pressing as it is unexampled.

Even your young daughters, whom maternal prudence has not yet furnished with the means of bestowing, may be cheaply taught the first rudiments of charity, togeth er with an important lesson of economy: they may be taught to sacrifice a feather, a set of ribands, an expensive ornament, an idle diversion. And if they are on this occasion instructed, that there is no true charity without self-denial, they will gain more than they are called upon to give for the supsub-pression of one luxury for a charitable purpose, is the exercise of two virtues, and this without any pecuniary expense. An indulgence is abridged and christian charity is exercised.

We are informed by public advertisement, that the large sums already so liberally scribed for the emigrant clergy are almost exhausted. Authentic information adds, that multitudes of distressed exiles in the island of Jersey, are on the point of wanting bread.

:

Let the sick and afflicted remember how dreadful it must be, to be exposed to the sufferings they feel without one of the allevia tions which mitigate their affliction. How dreadful it is to be without comfort, without necessaries, without a home--without a country! While the gay and prosperous would do well to recollect, how suddenly and terribly those unhappy persons for whom we plead, were, by the surprising vicissitudes of life, thrown down from heights of gayety and prosperity equal to what they are now enjoying. And let those who have husbands, fathers, sons,

Very many to whom this address is made have already contributed O let them not be weary in well-doing! I know that many are making generous exertions for the just and natural claims of the widows and chil dren of our own brave seamen and soldiers. Let it not be said, that the present is an interfering claim. Those to whom I write, have bread enough, and to spare. You, who fare sumptuously every day, and yet complain that you have little to bestow, let not this bounty be subtracted from another boun ty, but substract it rather from some super-brothers, or friends, reflect on the uncertainfluous expense.

ties of war, and the revolution of human afThe beneficent and right-minded want no fairs. It is only by imagining the possibility arguments to be pressed upon them; but it that those who are dear to us may be placed is not those alone whom I address; I write by the instability of human events in the to persons of every description. Luxurious same calamitous circumstances, that we can habits of living, which really furnish the dis-obtain an adequate feeling of the woes we are tressed with the fairest grounds for applica- called upon to commiserate. tion, are too often urged by those who prac- In a distress so wide and comprehensive as tise them as a motive for withholding assist the present, many are prevented from giving ance, and produced as a plea for having little by that popular excuse That it is but a drop to spare. Let her who indulges such habits, of water in the ocean' But let then reand pleads such excuses in consequence, reflect, that if all the individual drops were flect, that by retrenching one costly dish withheld, there would be no ocean at all; from her abundant table, by cutting off the and the inability to give much ought not, on superfluities of one expensive desert, omit- any occasion, to be converted into an excuse ting one evening's public amusement, she for giving nothing. Even moderate circummay furnish at least a week's subsistence to stances need not plead an exemption. The more than one person,* as liberally bred per- industrious tradesman will not, even in a pohaps as herself, and who, in his own country, litical view, be eventually a loser by his small may have often tasted how much more bles- contribution. The money now raised is sed it is to give than to receive-to a once neither carried out of our country, nor disaffluent minister of religion, who has been sipated in luxuries, but returns again to the Mr. Bowdler's letter states, that about six shil- community; returns to our shops and to our lings a week includes the expenses of each priest markets, to procure the bare necessaries of at Winchester.

life.

NOTE. The profits of this publication, which were considerable, were given to the French emigrant Clergy.

Some have objected to the difference of re- sacrificed their conscience to their convenligion of those for whom we solicit. Such ience, they had now been in this country; an objection hardly deserves a serious an- and if we wish for proselytes, who knows but swer. Surely if the superstitious Tartar it may be the first step towards their converhopes to become possessed of the courage sion, if we show them the purity of our reliand talents of the enemy he slays, the Chris-gion, by the beneficence of our actions. tian is not afraid of catching, or of propaga- If you will permit me to press upon you ting the error of the sufferer he relieves.such high motives (and it were to be wished Christian charity is of no party. We plead that in every action we were to be influennot for their faith but for their wants. But ced only by the highest) perhaps no act of while we affirm that it is not for their popery bounty to which you may be called out, can but their poverty which we solicit; yet let the more scrupulous, who look for desert as well as distress in the objects of their bounty, bear in mind, that if these men could have

ever come so immediately, and so literally under that solemn and affecting description, which will be recorded in the great day of account—¡ was a stranger and ye took me in.

SPEECH OF MR. DUPONT.

The following is an exact Translation from a Speech made in the National Convention at Paris, on Friday the 14th of December, 1792, in a debate on the subject of establishing Public Schools for the Education of Youth, by citizen Dupont, a member of considerable weight; and as the doctrines contained in it were received with unanimous applause, except from two or three of the clergy, it may be fairly considered as an exposition of the creed of that enlightened assembly. Translated from Le Moniteur of Sunday the 16th of December, 1792. WHAT! Thrones are overturned! Scep- to the convention, I am an atheist! (Here tres broken! Kings expire! And yet the there is some noise and tumult. But a great altars of GOD remain ! (Here there is a number of members cry out, what is that murmur from some members; and the abbe to us-you are an honest man!') But I defy ICHON demands that the person speaking a single individual, amongst the twenty-four may be called to order.) Tyrants in outrage millions of Frenchmen, to make against me to nature, continue to burn an impious in- any well-grounded reproach. I doubt cense on those altars! (Some murmurs whether the Christians or the Catholics, of arise, but they are lost in the applauses from which the last speaker, and those of his opinthe majority of the assembly.) The thrones ion, have been talking to us, can make the that have been reversed, have left these al- same challenge. (Great applauses.) There tars naked, unsupported, and tottering. A is another consideration-Paris has had great single breath of enlightened reason will now losses. It has been deprived of the combe sufficient to make them disappear; and if merce of luxury; of that factitious splenhumanity is under obligations to the French dour which was found at courts, and invited nation for the first of these benefits, the fall strangers hither. Well! We must repair of kings, can it be doubted but that the these losses. Let me then represent to you French people now sovereign, will be wise the times, that are fast approaching, when enough, in like manner, to overthrow those our philosophers, whose names are celebraaltars and those idols to which those kings ted throughout Europe, PETION, SYEYES, have hitherto made them subject? Nature CONDORCET, and others-surrounded in our and Reason, these ought to be the gods of Pantheon, as the Greek philosophers were men! These are my gods! (Here the at Athens, with a crowd of disciples coming abbe AUDREIN cried out, there is no bear- from all parts of Europe, walking like the ing this;' and rushed out of the assembly.- peripatetics, and teaching-this man, the sysA great laugh.) Admire nature-cultivate tem of the universe, and developing the reason. And you, legislators, if you desire progress of all human knowledge; that, perthat the French people should be happy, fectioning the social system, and showing in make haste to propagate these principles, and our decree of the 17th of June, 1789, the to teach them in your primary schools, in-seeds of the insurrections of the 14th of Justead of those fanatical principles which ly, and the 10th of August, and of all those have hitherto been taught. The tyranny of insurrections which are spreading with such kings was confined to make their people rapidity throughout Europe-so that these miserable in this life-but those other tyrants, young strangers, on their return to their rethe priests, extend their dominion into anoth-spective countries, may spread the same er, of which they have no other idea than of lights, and may operate, for the happiness of eternal punishments; a doctrine which some mankind, similar revolutions throughout the men have hitherto had the good nature to world. believe. But the moment of the catastrophe

(Numberless applauses arose, almost is come-all these prejudices must fall at the throughout the whole assembly, and in the same time. We must destroy them, or they galleries.)

will destroy us. For myself, I honestly avow

REMARKS ON THE SPEECH OF MR. DUPONT,

ON THE SUBJECT OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION,

Ir is presumed that it may not be thought the public, and especially to the more reliunseasonable at this critical time to offer to gious part of it, a few slight observations,

occasioned by the late famous speech of Mr. | never observed by what a variety of strange Dupont, which exhibits the confession of associations in the mind, opinions that seem faith of a considerable member of the French the most irreconcilable meet at some unsusnational convention. Though the speech pected turning, and come to be united in the itself has been pretty generally read, yet it same man ;-to all such it may appear quite was thought necessary to prefix it to these incredible, that well meaning and even pious remarks, lest such as have not already peru- people should continue to applaud the princised it, might, from an honest reluctance to ples of a set of men who have publicly made oredit the existence of such principles, dis- known their intention of abolishing Chrispute its authenticity, and accuse the remarks, tianity, as far as the demolition of altars, if unaccompanied by the speech, of a spirit priests, temples, and institutions, can abolish of invective, and unfair exaggeration. At it As to the religion itself, this also they the same time it must be confessed that its may traduce and reject, but we know, from impiety is so monstrous, that many good men the comfortable promise of an authority still were of opinion it ought not to be made fa- sacred in this country at least, that the gates miliar to the minds of Englishmen; for there of hell shall not prevail against it. are crimes with which even the imagination should never come in contact, and which it is almost safer not to controvert than to de

tail.

But as an ancient nation intoxicated their slaves, and then exposed them before their children, in order to increase their horror of intemperance; so it is hoped that this piece of impiety may be placed in such a light before the eyes of the Christian reader, that, in proportion as his detestation is raised, his faith, instead of being shaken, will be only so much the more strengthened.

This celebrated speech, though delivered in an assembly of politicians, is not on a ques tion of politics, but on one as superior to all political considerations as the soul is to the body, as eternity is to time. The object of this oration is not to dethrone kings, but HIM by whom kings reign. It does not excite the cry of indignation in the orator that Louis the Sixteenth reigns, but that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!

Nor is this the declaration of some obscure and anonymous person, but it is an exposition of the creed of a public leader. It is not a sentiment hinted in a journal, hazarded in a pamphlet, or thrown out at a disputing club; but it is the implied faith of the rulers of a great nation.

Little notice would have been due to this famous speech, if it conveyed the sentiments of only one vain orator; but it should be observed, that it was heard, received, applaud ed, with two or three exceptions only a fact, which you, who have scarcely believed in the existence of atheism, will hardly credit, and which, for the honour of the eighteenth century, it is hoped that our posterity will reject as totally incredible.

Let me not be misunderstood by those to whom these slight remarks are principally addressed; by that class of well intentioned but ill-judging people, who favour at least, if they do not adopt, the prevailing sentiments of the new republic You are not here accused of being the wilful abettors of infideli ty. God forbid! We are persuaded better things of you; and things which accompany salvation. But this ignis fatuus of liberty and universal brotherhood, which the French are madly pursuing, with the insignia of freedom in one hand, and the bloody bayonet in the other, has bewitched your senses, is misleading your steps, and betraying you to ruin. You are gazing at a meteor raised by the vapours of vanity, which these wild and infatuated wanderers are pursuing to their destruction; and though for a moment you mistake it for a heaven born light, which leads to the perfection of human freedom, you will, should you join in the mad pursuit, soon discover that it will conduct you over dreary wilds and sinking bogs, only to plunge you in deep and inevitable destruction.

Much, very much is to be said in vindication of your favouring in the first instance their political projects. The cause they took in hand seemed to be the great cause of hu man kind. Its very name insured its popularity. What English heart did not exult at the demolition of the Bastile? What lover of his species did not triumph in the warm hope, that one of the finest countries in the_world would soon be one of the most free? Popery and despotism, though chained by the gentle influence of Louis the sixteenth, had actually slain their thousands. Little was it then imagined, that Anarchy and Atheism, the monsters who were about to succeed them, A love of liberty, generous in its principle, would soon slay their ten thousands. If we inclines some well meaning but mistaken cannot regret the defeat of the two former men still to favour the proceedings of the na- tyrants, what must they be who can triumph tional convention of France. They do not in the mischiefs of the two latter? Who, I perceive that the licentious wildness which say, that had a head to reason, or a heart to has been excited in that country, is destruc-feel, did not glow with the hope, that from the tive of all true happiness. and no more resembles liberty, than the tumultuous joys of the drunkard resemble the cheerfulness of a sober and well-regulated mind.

To those who do not know of what strange inconsistencies man is made up; who have not considered how some persons having at first been hastily and heedlessly drawn in as approvers, by a sort of natural progression, soon become principals:-to those who have

ruins of tyranny, and the rubbish of popery, a beautiful and finely framed edifice would in time bave been constructed, and that ours would not have been the only country in which the patriot's fair idea of well-understood liberty, the politician's view of a per fect constitution, together with the establish ment of a pure and reasonable, a sublime and rectified Christianity, might be realized? But, alas! it frequently happens that the

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wise and good are not the most adventurous ty; the failures inseparable from the best in attacking the mischiefs which they are concerted human undertakings, serve the first to perceive and lament. With a ti- once to multiply resources, and to excite midity in some respects virtuous, they fear self-distrust; while ideal projectors, and acattempting any thing which may possibly ag- tual demolishers, are the most conceited of gravate the evils they deplore, or put to haz-mortals. It never occurs to them that those ard the blessings they already enjoy. They defects of old institutions, on which they. dread plucking up the wheat with the tares, frame their objections, are equally palpable and are rather apt, with a spirit of hopeless to all other men It never occurs to them resignation, that frenzy can demolish faster than wisdom. can build; that pulling down the strongest edifice is far more easy than the reconstruction of the meanest; that the most ignorant labourer is competent to the one, while for the other the skill of the architect, and the patient industry of the workman must unite. That a sound judgment will profit by the errors of our predecessors, as well as by their excellences. That there is a retrospective wisdom to which much of our prospective wisdom owes its birth; and that after all, neither the perfection pretended to, nor the pride which accompanies the pretension, is made for man.'

To bear the ills they have, Than fly to others that they know not of.' While sober-minded and considerate men, therefore, sat mourning over this complicated mass of error, and waited till God, in his own good time, should open the blind eyes; the vast scheme of reformation was left to that set of rash and presumptuous adventurers who are generally watching how they may convert public grievances to their own per sonal account. It was undertaken, not upon the broad basis of a wise and well-digested scheme, of which all the parts should contribute to the perfection of one consistent whole: it was carried on, not by those steady meaIt is the same over-ruling vanity which opsures, founded on rational deliberation, which erates in their politics, and in their religion, are calculated to accomplish so important an which makes Kersaint* boast of carrying his end; not with a temperance which indicated destructive projects from the Tagus to the a sober love of law, or a sacred regard for Brazils, and from Mexico to the shores of religion; but with the most extravagant lust the Ganges; which makes him menace to of power, with the most inordinate vanity outstrip the enterprise of the most extravawhich perhaps ever instigated human mea-gant hero of romance, and almost undertake sures a lust of power, which threatens to with the marvellous celerity of the nimbleextend its desolating influence over the whole footed Puck globe;-a vanity of the same destructive species with that which stimulated the celebrated incendiary of Ephesus, who being It is the same vanity, still the master-pasweary of his native obscurity and insignifi- sion in the bosom of a Frenchman, which cance, and preferring infamy to oblivion, leads Dupont and Manuel to undertake in could contrive no other road to fame and im- their orations to abolish the Sabbath, to exmortality, than that of setting fire to the ex-terminate the priesthood, to erect a panthequisite temple of Diana. He was remem-on for the world, to restore the peripatetic bered indeed, as he desired to be, but it was philosophy, and in short to revive every only to be execrated; while the seventh wonder of the world lay prostrate through his

crime.

To put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.'—

thing of ancient Greece, except the pure taste, the profound wisdom, the love of virtue, the veneration of the laws, and that high degree of reverence which even virtuous Pagans profess for the Deity.

But too often that daring boldness which excites admiration, is not energy, is not virtue, is not genius. It is blindness in the judgIt is the same spirit of novelty, and the ment, is vanity in the heart. Strong and un- same hostility to established opinions, which precedented measures, plans instantaneously dictate the preposterous and impious doctrine conceived, and as rapidly executed, argue that death is an eternal sleep. The prophets not ability, but arrogance. A mind contin- and apostles assert the contrary. David exually driven out in quest of presumptuous pressly says, when I awake up after thy novelties, is commonly a mind void of real likeness I shall be satisfied;' implying that resources within, and incapable of profiting our true life will begin at our departure out from observation without. Sure principles of this world. The destruction or dissolucannot be ascertained without experiment, tion of the body will be the revival, not the and experiment requires more time than the death, of the soul.-It is to the living the sanguine can spare, and more patience than apostle says, awake thou that sleepest, and the vain possess. In the crude speculations arise from the DEAD, and Christ shall give of these rash reformists, few obstructions thee light.' occur. It is like taking a journey, not on a road, but on a map. Difficulties are unseen, or are kept in the back ground. Impossibilities are smothered, or rather they are not suffered to be born. Nothing is felt but the ardour of enterprise, nothing is seen but the certainty of success. Whereas if difficulties grow out of sober experiment, the disappointments attending them generate humili-projects.

and wretched hands into which the work of It is surely to be charged to the inadequate reformation fell, and not to the impossibility of amending the civil and religious institutions of France, that all has succeeded so ill. It cannot be denied perhaps, that a reform

See his speech, enumerating their intended