great metropolis of our country, upon the eye and imagination of such as behold it for the first time; particularly if the stranger be a young person, and a late inhabitant of a provincial town. I have occasionally felt surprise by a result, as I then imagined, so unlikely to have happened; but, in fact, so easily explicable on due investigation.

ATHEISM.

MEN have certainly in some few, very few instances, declared themselves to be atheists: but, query, has such a character as a satisfied atheist, ever actually and verily existed? Does it exist at this day?

It has long been my opinion that no such definite character HAS EVER EXISTED, Many have assumed an atheistical creed, and laboured to supply new reasoning to support it, I believe, also, that they have really conceived their reasonings to be cogent; difficult to be refuted; nay, almost conclusive. So far, I apprehend, that some men have travelled. Still, I do not admit, that any man, of sound mind, has steadily experienced to be lodged, within that mind, a full and settled faith of the non-existence of Deity.

I must acknowledge my creed to be confined to a narrower range than this. I don't believe that any man ever felt the atheistical argument so powerful as the

antagonist argument. It is impossible, perhaps, for the human imagination to conceive such a case. But, the atheistical disputant has more, much more, to combat than the antagonist argument: he has to carry on a furious warfare against those feelings and convictions which he cannot overcome, because they are the impressions, the indelible impressions, engraven in his heart and mind, of deep and awful reality. They are native, primeval, instinctive impressions; hardly falling short of self-evident truth. Such is the testimony and the consciousness of Deity.

If such a one, as an actual atheist, could be found, he would, amidst the various, the perverse, and extravagant characters, to be met with in society, exhibit, perhaps, the only example of a human being, with whom it must, of necessity, become wholly vain, nay impracticable, to argue.

If a man declares that he is not satisfied with mathematical demonstration: if he is ready to contend that two and two do not make four: if he entertains serious doubts of his own existence: all this signifies little--these are no more than pitiable aberrations of the mind, from which a man may recover; and which, while the inter

ruption of health continues, may just render him hypochondriacally, or agreeably ridiculous. With such a man we can discourse; we may even find opportunities and openings for remonstrance. But if an atheist, in real sentiment, could be found, to him no reasoning could be applied: no appeal could possibly be made. He forms a combination of an infidelity the most perfect, and a faith the most extravagant, which can be lodged and associated in an individual mind. He questions the existence of Deity: he admits the existence of the universe; for, it is not necessary, that he, who professes atheism, should reject the evidence of sense-but he must, necessarily, believe that the universe has created and fashioned itself. But, if the universe has created and arranged itself, it is obvious that the thing so created and arranged, is, in all respects, equal to the agent and the power from which it has proceeded for matter will be equal to matter; the universe will be equal to the universe; that is, the thing created must in all points be equal to the power which created it-the cause and the effect must be one and the same.

Now, as the nominal atheist will hardly

venture to maintain this doctrine, he will be driven to acknowledge that the universe is an effect: but an effect necessarily presupposes and involves a cause.

Thus the atheistical professor will be: found to exhibit in himself the jarring complexity of character already instanced: he will be driven to a disbelief in cause, and to a faith in effect: a consummation of absurdity, at which, hardly madness, unless accompanied and goaded on by wickedness, could ever have arrived.