exciting their sympathies in our behalf; and the same means have been supposed equally efficacious with the gods.

Gifts are a great means of securing human favor; and gifts to pious uses, whether in the shape of sacrifices, the erection of temples, or other appropriations of property thought to be agreeable to the gods, have everywhere attained the character of religious acts.

Processions, ceremonies, feasts, festivals, and the erection of monuments and statues are usual means of doing honor to men; the same sorts of honor have been supposed to be agreeable also to the gods. We may prove our devotion to men, and so gain their favor, by submitting to order to give them pleasure. various bodily torments, and pleasures have obtained the character of religious acts, under the idea that these things are pleasing to the gods.

pains and privations in Thus fasts, scourgings, abstinence from many

To believe a man, against the testimony of our own senses and reason, is a high compliment. Hence the merit ascribed by theologians to implicit faith.

36. As all the operations of nature have been imagined to originate in the volition of some deity, it naturally has happened that the same analogical method of reasoning has caused these natural events to be construed into marks of divine approbation, or of divine displeasure. Thus, seasonable showers, plentiful harvests, success in war, and public prosperity in general have been esteemed marks of divine favor; while droughts, famines, earthquakes, hurricanes, pestilences, defeats, and misfortunes in

general, have been ascribed to the displeasure of some deity. The gods, moreover, by analogy to the conduct of human princes, have been imagined not to be very discriminating in their wrath; but to visit a whole community with calamities, because their displeasure has been excited by the acts of one, or a few.*

It is hence easy to discern how the worship of the gods, that is to say, the performance of certain acts thought likely to secure their favor and to avert their indignation, acquired the character of moral duties. They acquired that character not by reason of any individual benefits they were supposed to produce to him who performed them; but because they were thought an essential means of preserving the community in general against the injurious anger of the gods. Hence, just as public prosperity and calamity have ceased to be ascribed to special divine interferences, the performance of religious acts has ceased to be ranked among moral duties.

37. There is, however, another point of view, from which this subject may be considered, and which is of the greatest importance, since it has afforded a foundation for a theory of morals of very

* Thus, the pestilence that raged in the Grecian camp, commemorated at the beginning of the Iliad, originated in the refusal of Agamemnon to give up the daughter of a priest of Apollo, whose wrongs that god revenged upon the whole Greek army. Or, to cite a more recent instance, the celebrated Salem witchcraft in 1692- the last of the witchcrafts, at least on a large scale- was supposed by some of the most learned theologians of that day, to be sent as a punishment for the sin committed by some foppish young men and women, in wearing lace and love-locks.

extensive currency, and will help us to an explanation of several of the most remarkable anomalies and discrepancies in systems of practical morality.

The tendency towards simplification, the anology of human societies, particularly in the East, where the supreme power over great districts was generally lodged in a single chief; and the gradual advance of men from gross ignorance and credulity, to a certain degree of knowledge and of skepticism, led to the gradual abandonment and repudiation of the numerous deities of the old mythologies, and to the concentration of all the divine power and attributes in a single being, the sole God, the supreme Deity, who might indeed have numerous inferior, invisible agents, but who was, in fact, the prime mover and original cause of all things.

This deity, however, was still supposed to be a person; and though men ceased to represent him under a bodily shape, and with human members; though many of the adherents of this new form of spiritualism were violent iconoclasts; it is not the less true that they still made God after their own image; for he was still supposed to possess a nature modelled after the nature of man; leaving out certain parts, which appeared less worthy of admiration, and exaggerating others to an infinite degree. In particular, he was still supposed to be like man, accessible to pain and pleasure; and certain acts of men were still supposed able to give him pleasure and to give him pain.

It will be shown in another part of this treatise, that such a being, with those who have a present,

continuous, and practical belief in his existence, is calculated to engross the whole of the moral affections, to such an extent, that his pains and pleasures become the only pains and pleasures-not their own -which seem worthy of the slightest attention, or at all entitled to influence conduct.

38. This idea of the nature of God led to a theory of morals which may be distinguished as the Mystical Theory; and the various systems of practical morals, founded upon that theory, may be called Mystical Systems, or systems of mystical morality; systems which, variously modified, are spread over all the world; and which have exercised, and still continue to exercise, an extensive influence.

In the systems of Mystical morals, as in the various systems of Forensic morals, for we may employ that term by way of distinction, the difference between praiseworthy, indifferent, and wrong actions, still depends upon the principle above laid down, to wit, their tendency to produce pain, or pleasure, or neither, to some sensitive being other than the actor. But while, in all Forensic systems of morals, those other beings are men, or occasionally animals, in Mystical systems of morals, it is the pain or pleasure of the deity, by which the moral character of actions is tested. Such an act is praiseworthy because it pleases God; in other words, because it gives God pleasure; such an act is wrong, because it is displeasing to God; in other words, because it gives God pain; such an act is indifferent, because it does. not affect God in any way.

39. The Mystical theory, however, when it is

made the foundation of practical morals, is usually amalgamated with the Selfish theory; that is, with the theory, that virtue consists in securing our own greatest happiness. This amalgamation easily takes place; for since, according to the mystics, every thing depends upon the volition of God; and as God is supposed to act, at least to a certain extent, as men act, and, like them, to be influenced by feelings of gratitude; hence, those who please God will certainly be rewarded by him in the end; and those who displease him will be punished. But as this present life does by no means exhibit any such rewards and punishments, mysticism has been led to adopt the hypothesis of a future retribution; a doctrine, as we have seen, which the semi-Stoics, and the semi-Epicureans have also found themselves obliged to adopt, as the only means of giving any plausibility to their idea of the coincidence of virtue and happiness.

40. The fact, that actions, to be approved, must have a tendency to promote happiness, and that no action acquires the character of being wrong except by reason of some pain that it inflicts, or tends to inflict, has been so far perceived, as to have been made the foundation of a theory of morals, according to which virtuous actions are neither more nor less than useful actions; meaning, by useful actions, actions which tend to produce pleasure, or to prevent pain.

41. But this theory involves two fatal defects. In the first place, it does not accurately distinguish between actions useful to others, and actions useful