common sense, or reason, the all in all? This reason decides in our favour; mankind believe in a God. This then is the decision of the common sense of mankind, that is, of reason, of nature-and therefore of truth.

7. The existence of rational, and even of irrational, beings. A stream can rise no higher than its fountain; therefore, human and even brutal intellect, must have an intelligent Cause.

8. Divine Providence. Cases innumerable might be adduced, of special Divine interposition; and the general superintendence of Divine Providence over the concerns of mankind, is too plain to escape universal observation. 9. Experience. Christians know there is a God by their own experience. This is knowledge to themselves, but evidence to others.

10. Revelation. This renders it certain that there is a God, though every other evidence were to fail. That a Revelation has been given, I propose to prove, after finishing the discussion of this question.

ORIGEN BACHELER.

TO ORIGEN BACHELER.

LETTER VII.

April 23, 1831. A MAN is not to be suffered simply to remain silent, in cases where a loud expression of opinion would deprive his wife and children of bread, without being accused of self-interested hypocrisy! When the world learns to honor honesty, and to approve, instead of persecuting, heterodox virtue, 'twill be time enough for it to insist upon all men saying, at all risks, all they think. It ought to be more than satisfied, meanwhile, that any are found willing thus to incur its ill-humour for the sake of rendering it a service.

The bearing which the digression regarding the relation of cause and effect has on the subject before us, is this: The chief, nay the only, positive evidence of a cause is the distinguishing of a precedence. This evidence is furnished in the case of artificial design, and is wanting in the case of (what we call) natural design. But the argument is somewhat abstract and metaphysical, and I will not insist upon it. I merely remark, that if Origen Bacheler's letters uniformly and immediately preceded Robert Dale Owen's throughout all nature, we should be sufficiently justified in believing in a necessary relation between them as cause and effect.

I shall not dispute with you about words. If you choose

to suppose immediately before the moving of two attracted bodies, a tendency to move; and then further, immediately before that tendency, a something preceding it, and choose to call that something Attraction, you may do so. But I see not why it were not as rational to go back three links as two, or why we need go back any at all. Things approach each other: this is all we know. Why not be satisfied to call this regular sequence of motion (since it is all we can understand or distinguish) Attraction?

It is truly curious to observe what the human mind can bring itself to believe! Formerly, my opponent did not choose exactly to assume the optimist's position, and declare that ❝evil is not evil." But how does he now creep out of Epicurus' dilemma? By telling us (in the most pointed language of optimism) that famine and pestilence, tornados and earthquakes, are "evidences of wisdom too great for his comprehension." When these are produced, he "supposes the Deity carrying on his mightiest and most stupendous operations."—And the moral pestilence? the tornado of crime? the earthquake of vice? What of them? They, too, are "the strongest proofs of wisdom infinite." War, rapine, cold-blooded murder-the sword which slays, like that of Moses, men, women, and children, the infant at the breast—the passions that rankle in the heart, and darken, with their foul eclipse, the fair face of nature -the fanaticism that rejoices in the heretic's death-groan, and thinks to propitiate its God by inventing every day some new torture for his creatures-but why further enumerate?-all the blasting crimes that devastate this suffering world, are "so many evidences of wisdom too great for comprehension !" When the God of the Jews is dissatisfied with the half-barbarity of his chosen people which caused them to murder all the adult males only among the Midianites, and when, by the mouth of Moses, he

bids them "kill all the women, and kill all the males among the little ones, but the women-children keep alive for themselves"* -then this ultra brutality is "the strongest proof of wisdom infinite!" "It is then"-when engaged in issuing such commands that my opponent "thinks the Deity is carrying on his mightiest and most stupendous operations!" Common sense! common sense! thou art a precious gift! I would we knew how to value thee!

Must I argue against such a creed? When I am told that we cannot tell whether the vilest and basest crimes that have sunk men below the most grovelling among brutes, be not for the best--no, no! the extravagance is far greater even than this--when I am told that the more horrible the brutality, the stronger the proof of wisdom infinite!—and then bid to use the weapons of logic against the position I feel, that if the heart refute not this outrage on its holiest sympathies, the arguments of cold reason-though numerous, powerful, overwhelming, as any earthly arguments can be-will fall on a dull ear, and be repeated to an impassive judgment !

And wherefore this insult to the common sense of mankind? Why this assertion, that we are blasphemers and arrogaters of omniscience, if we presume to doubt whether the vice and crime that deluge the world are the work of Omnipotent Benevolence? For what purpose are we thus denied the right of judgment in a case, than which a clearer was never shone upon by the noon-day sun of actual perception ?---To furnish an imaginary apology for an unseen God! To solve a fancied difficulty about an unknown Creator of the Universe!

* Numbers, Chap. xxxi. Verse 17. The passage is too indecent to be quoted in all its brutality.

And what is this great difficulty?" If God cannot do what man is daily doing, that is, 'discard the evil and retain the good-he is less powerful (you argue) than man; but this (you say) is blasphemous puerility." It does not follow, because man, in his limited sphere, can to a small extent, discard evil and retain good, that a God who cannot do this in the sphere of the universe and to an infinite extent, is less powerful than man; but it does follow, (and this was my argument) that if a God cannot do, on a large scale, what man can do on a small one, such a God is far-far indeed, from being Omnipotent.

But now, suppose it did follow, (as you say it does) that a God who cannot 'discard evil and retain good,' throughout the earth, were more impotent than man, and suppose that it is irrational-or say impossible—to imagine such a God; what follows? I pray you, Sir, to mark! Your God is such an one. Your God (as you yourself have told us half a dozen times) cannot discard the evil and retain the good. This is the very reason you give, why evil is not discarded. Your God, then (on your own premises, remember, not on mine) is more impotent than man. To imagine your God is (in your own language, for I never permit myself any such) blasphemous puerility. Strange! that you should talk of dilemmas !

Observe, then. I argued, that a God who cannot, like man, discard the evil and retain the good, is not Omnipotent. You argue, that such a God is less powerful than man, and cannot exist-quite forgetting, that that very God is your own!

The same polite offer, therefore, which you are good enough to make me, of either horn of the dilemma, strictly reverts, on your own showing, to yourself. It is you, not I nor Plato, who have to choose between what you call Blasphemy and Atheism.