throughout, by a holy and unparalleled uniformity, by the unvarying and unspotted brightness of consistent excellence. We advert with equal astonishment to the purity of their principles and of their lives; and, circumstanced as they were, we know not from whence, if not from heaven, they derived the knowledge of truths which had been so long hidden from the most applauded sages of the most cultivated ages, or the motives which could nourish and sustain their spirit through the long and voluntary endurance of so many toils and such unmerited sufferings.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCLUSION.

The evidences, according to Rousseau, of an inspired religion-The principle which he lays down, adopted in the preceding work—Retrospect-The internal character of the religions of Greece, of Italy, of India, and of the Koran, and the pretensions of their founders-The defects of both-The Christian dispensation-Not to be rejected because it may involve occasional difficulty, or pretend to issue from miraculous intervention—Its indisputable excellence, as a system of duty, of consolation, and of hope-Worthy of God-Adequate to the religious edification of man-Christ and his disciples-Their utter incompetence, in a human view, to the accomplishment of their object—Their sincerity, their sufferings, and their success, and the inference from all-Objection, from the pretended failure of the religion-Answer-Conclusion.

F, says the most eloquent and acute of sceptics,

IF

any commission for the religious instruction of the world have ever issued from the authority of God, such a commission must include sufficient evidences of its high origin, to entitle it to the respect and acceptance of mankind. Of these, the first, the most important, and the most certain, would be found in the nature of the doctrines communicated; that is, in the purity, utility, and holiness, which might authorize us to trace them to the inspiration of divine goodness and divine intelligence. The second, would be impressed on the character of the persons themselves, who had been chosen by God for the communication of his word; and their justice, their sanctity, and their truth; their superiority to all worldly

passions, and designs; the disinterestedness, the grandeur, and the sublimity of their views; their prudence, their self-devotion, their sagacity, and their wisdom; and their adaptation, in all, to the high and paramount duties of their divine vocation, would testify that they were something more than mere men, and that they were guided and illuminated by lights from heaven*.

In the preceding inquiry, I have estimated, by this criterion, the most distinguished religions which have prevailed in the world. I have inquired by what internal evidences they were sustained, by what virtues of their founders they were exemplified or confirmed, and whether, if the review might permit us to infer the necessity of an inspired religion, it might also justify the persuasion that such a religion has been conferred.

In four of these religions, the boast of human sagacity and wisdom, the admitted guides of numerous nations, the fancied and venerated repositories of divine truth, we have discovered little but frailty and absurdity, inconsistency and error. That which was promulgated to instruct, was only to misdirect and deceive the world. That which pretended to the sanction of the Almighty, was only to demonstrate the ignorance, the perversity, and the corruption of

man.

The doctrines of piety, and the precepts of morals, thus announced, were vitiated by almost every defect which could flow from human depravity or folly. Truth was incidental, falsehood and error, the most extravagant and most pernicious, were of perpetual recurrence. Whatever might be the wisdom of the

Rousseau.

casual maxim, whatever might be the utility and excellence, of the contingent rule, they were enfeebled and counteracted by the intermixture of tenets equally mischievous and corrupt; and every where the claim to divine authority was defeated by the fraud or folly. which demonstrated the poverty and the depravity. of a human origin.

The religions of Greece, of Italy, and of India, are equal and similar in their corruption. Innumerable gods are proclaimed, singular in crime, and extravagant in folly; contradictory in their attributes, their tempers and their designs; discordant and hostile in the debates of their celestial convocations; perpetually agitated by worse than earthly passions; and, with the name and honours of divine beings, demonstrat-. ing the fallibility and the frailties of the worst and lowest of mankind. Of these celestial powers, some, are cruel, some capricious, some libertine, some im-, placable, some brutal, none uniform or wise in design or will. In the rule which they exercise, the adoration which they claim, and the institutions, which they sanction, they are proportionally pernicious or absurd. They afford no grounds to their worshippers to look up to them for consolation and support, amid the struggles and labours of earthly calamity. They might sustain and bless in their caprice, but; there is no permanence in their justice, and no certainty in their mercy. Vice was often to obtain from their interposition what was denied to virtue; and, those lords of the universe, the vile creation of a fantastic superstition, or of the fraud and ignorance of legislators and of priests, were to preside over the world, only to convert it into a scene of disorder and misrule, and to indulge the freaks and gambols of a wild, a wanton, and a mischievous omnipotence.

The religions which erected the statue and the altar to these extraordinary deities, were not likely to exercise any salutary influence on the morals and manners of men. Little effect was to be produced by the practical rule, to which was opposed the execrable examples of the gods. The precept, despised and violated by the inhabitants of heaven, could scarcely be respected by the sojourners of the earth; and the celestial vice would encourage and sanction the terrestrial depravity. But men were not to be corrupted solely by the crimes which degraded the objects of their worship. The moral obligation, which was rarely announced and inadequately sanctioned, was perpetually counteracted in its influence, by rites and customs sanctified in the estimate of the people, and equally vile and degrading in their tendency. What of public or private virtue could be expected to issue from the institution of castes, of household slavery, of a sordid and selfish polygamy, of the funeral pile, of human sacrifice, of the religious obscenity of the temples, established in the East; or from the inequality of the sexes, the facility of divorce, the legalized infamy of infanticide, the festivals and orgies of barbarous riot, the hideous devotion of Corinthian revels, which were admitted and encouraged in the West? On these subjects, the mythology of the Greek, the Roman, and the Hindu, wanted nothing to render it perfect in absurdity and mischief; and we are astonished at the corruption and folly of laws, which, given as was announced, for the salutary direction of human conduct, were, in most cases, the production of ignorance or of fraud, and were uniformly and universally injurious to the intellectual, the social, and the moral interests of mankind.