II.

FALSE VIEWS.

VERY comparison of the religion of the Bible

with false religions, illustrates its superiority, and confirms its exclusive claims to a Divine original. We cannot open the sacred books of Pagans, without being struck with the unworthy views and feeble conceits, which they entertained of the Divine character and government. Their views of the creation, and destiny of the world, and the race which inhabits it, their codes of morals, all betray the human origin of these writings. But, when we open the inspired Volume, the beauty, the elevation, the perfection which characterize its revelations of God, the duty which God requires of man, and human destiny, prove its Divine authorship.

On the subject of the future life, we have in the Bible, in contrast with the uncertain and contradictory doctrines of heathen poets, philosophers, and priests, and in contrast also with the vagaries of men who have set themselves up as the authorized mes

sengers of Heaven, to teach independently of HIS written word, clear and definite instruction leading us forward where we are fully satisfied the mere reason of man could never have led; and never betraying, by the least wildness or presumption, that we are under the direction of a blind or uncertain guide. It inspires all who commit themselves to its guidance with unshaken confidence. It illuminates the Future. That which it points out as the highest glory of man, we are made to feel is the only destiny worthy of his moral and intellectual nature. The Heaven of the Bible fitly crowns the Divine dispensations towards man; it is the perfection of his being; it is worthy of a God.

It is impossible to understand our indebtedness to the word of God, on this or any other subject, because it is impossible to. understand what our degree of ignorance would be, if we had never possessed it; or what theirs is, who are still destitute of it. Could we shut it up, and ignore its teachings, we might discover how little we should then know in respect to Heaven. We may gather and collate all that our fellow-men, guided only by the light of nature, or such traditionary light of a revelation as may remain to any of them, have taught and believed, and appropriate it all, or all that we choose to select from the heterogeneous mass, to compensate for our discarded Bibles, and it will only serve to

make our darkness like that which was sent as a plague upon Egypt, "a horror of great darkness."

If we make our appeal to the bards, who embodied the popular religious belief of our idolatrous forefathers, we learn that while their invisible world was seated in the clouds, it was peopled with heroes possessed of human passions, devoted to the same pastimes and employments, which had occupied them while on earth. With glittering swords, they rode on steeds won in battle, and had daily encounters with their enemies. The battle over, they bathed in fountains of life-giving water, and, being instantly healed of their wounds, sat down to a sumptuous banquet, and passed the hours of the night in singing war-songs, and drinking from the hollow skulls of their enemies. The Druids, who were the supporters of a superstition, the most terrible ever known among men, who made their abode in caves and the trunks of decayed trees, sacrificing human victims, by hundreds together, give us no better answer, when we would know what awaits the spirits of men after death. Having made this world terrible, by their cruel penalties, sporting, as it were, with human gore and bones, they sought to extend their authority into the next, by working upon the fears of their timorous votaries. They taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls; and even all their ideas

of future happiness, so far as we can now learn, were borrowed from this eternal migration.

If we make our appeal to the idolatrous Aborigines of this country, and ask them what are their highest hopes of happiness beyond the grave, all that we learn is that they expect to go to some remote part of the continent, where they shall be restored to their hunting-grounds, resume the much-loved chase, and be engaged in the daring exploits, and wild adventures of the forest. "They say there is a great King who made them, who dwells in a glorious country to the southward of them, and that the souls of the good shall go thither where they shall live again." * One of England's most eminent poets has clothed the "poor Indian's" hope in its most attractive light. He makes him "see God in clouds," and "hear him. in the wind," and to expect

"Beyond the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,

Some happier Island in the watery waste;

Where slaves once more their native lands behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold."

If, now, we turn, and ask the wisest ancient philosophers, what prospects of future happiness they have to offer to pilgrims in this vale of tears, we find

* Wm. Penn to "The Free Soc. of Traders of Pa."

*

that many of them were in fearful doubt, as to there being any future existence whatever. We find that one sect utterly denied the soul's immortality, and contended that it was material, introduced into the system by respiration; that it grew with the growth of the body, and was nourished by material food; and that when the body died, it also ceased to exist. In them we have the representatives of the older class of modern infidels, a class of infidels among whom David Hume stands preeminent for ability and the boldness of his speculations and skepticism. That the human soul is nothing and there is no hereafter, are not discoveries which modern infidelity can claim the honour of having made. It has only brought to the surface what was cast up, and again submerged many ages ago.

We find that in the most ancient schools of metaphysical science-those of India-the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul was acknowledged only in this imperfect form, that, as the soul of man emanated from the great Soul of the universe, so it will be re-absorbed into it upon the death of the body; thus denying that it has any distinct, personal existence, in the highest state of happiness, in another world. This is the hypothesis of Hindooism, one of the oldest superstitions in the world. The character of its multitudinous divinities is sufficient to show

*The Epicureans.