To erect the glorious fabric of natural religion, it is by no means necessary to clear away the rubbish of prejudice and priest-craft, which become mere dust when the ponderous stones of truth, of which this fabric is composed, are collected, and the foundation is laid; but lest this dust should embarrass weak eyes, one single observation, like a torrent from the clouds, will condense it to a palpable mud, and wash it all into the common sewer of ignorance.

In every country into which I have travelled, I have always observed that morality and religion were constantly in enmity, and where the one reigned, the other was exiled.

If we begin the parallel of examination in the East, and proceed with it to the West, we find the Asiatic nations occupied one half of the day in ceremonies of religion, while the other half of the day is spent in acts of knavery, fraud and cruelty; sympathy of heart and rectitude of mind are absolutely not only unpractised, but literally unknown. The nations of Europe follow the same parallel, and the most religious countries are here also the most immoral, which Russia and Italy incontestably prove; France and England, as being the least religious, excel in morality, in the same degree as they have abandoned religion.

In England alone this parallel is strongly illustrated, where the most zealous sect in the world becomes an asylum for the most abandoned of mankind, and wisdom seems to have produced an event, which, if the mind viewed it through an unprejudiced medium, would cause religion to become a suicide, and die by its own hand.

This sect of mental idolators have formed a tenet, that declares morality inimical to religion, and that a man obtains the recompense of heaven for credulity alone. The blindness of zeal has led these enthusiasts to produce more evidence in favor of natural religion and truth, than the most ingenious and elaborate arguments of a child of Nature.

Priests of all other religions, however they may impose their reveries upon the ignorance of their votaries, have policy enough to sanctify their follies with morality, in order to procure the support of government, which participating of the error and prejudice of the governed, is not able to detect the shallow artifice of priestcraft, which, by the dispensation of pardon for the most atrocious crimes, betrays itself almost as openly as does the enthusiasm of the methodists; and the tariff of expiations and atonements of the one, and the impious blasphemy against virtue of the other, is ample evidence to convict such religions in the court of wisdom and conscience, of impiety, falsehood and treason, to the happiness and well-being of all sensitive Nature.

If these observations are not comprehensible or satisfactory, I must refer my reader to the "System of Nature" written in French by M. Mirabaud, [now ascribed to Baron D'Holbach,] where error is so closely combatted and pursued in all its recesses, that the mind by irresistible conviction emerges from its abyss, and seeks with impatience a new guide, or the light of Nature, which I hope will be found in these pages, and that they will form a complete supplement to that work.

The progress of human thought, or moral motion, to the meridian of human essence, has been repressed and arrested by an assent of the mind, to Intelligence as being the primary cause of all matter and motion, from its property of order and analogy with human intelligence. But what effect does this assent produce? a painful acquiesence in the evils of life, filled with doubt and terror of futurity.

The Religion of Nature considers the cause of motion as incomprehensible, and studies only the effect as being interesting and important, and sanctioned by Utility, which is the god of Nature. When hunger propels, does the wise man hesitate to eat till he has discovered the cause of that passion? No, he earnestly sets about procuring its gratification. So does the child of Nature, with moral motion or action; he considers not its cause

but studies to conduct it to its end, or the well-being of self, as the centre of the great system of animated matter, which, like the celestial systems of planets, moves in the order of unitary influence, and no part of the one can lose its gravity or attraction, or the other its sympathy or rectitude, without communicating disorder or pain to the whole; and the moral world must remain in its present chaos, till wisdom has gained the first combat over coercion, and confined it to the succinct law of restraining the will of violators; and in this state it would soon exhaust its own element and dissolve.

This triumph of wisdom can only be accelerated by the enormities of political evils, and destructive warfare, which having the same direful effect as anarchy in indi vidual states, will render the confederacy of nations as necessary to the safety of mankind, as is domestic gov

ernment.

At this æra all national competition being destroyed, and the peaceful communication of commerce promoting intellectual intercourse, individual competition will also relax; and Industry, the dreadful enemy to truth and happiness, which under the veil of necessity and avarice, is cultivated as a friend, will be changed for repose, the only medium through which intellectual existence or consciousness can be obtained. The industry which Nature demands as the means of existence and comfort, is repose when compared with the destructive toil, which the competition of nations, and the avarice of powerful individuals, imposes on their fellow-creatures.

Among the various devices and contrivances, which the ingenuity of man has invented, through civil, political and domestic institutions, to fill up the measure of life, is that of the arch-fiend, Industry, who has pierced a hole in the bottom of the vessel, which, like the urn of. the Danaides, excites and mocks the laboring bands that fill it.

The laws of civil society are not invented to protect the indigent; for the rich merchant or land-holder holds them in a subjection from the necessity of subsistence,

which, law has as yet contrived no remedy to relieve them in, and policy seems not to demand it, or to measure it by the common standard of political necessity.

The poor artizan, who may have a wife and several children, labors, we will suppose, for two shillings sterling per day: this is but barely sufficient to maintain his own person; what then becomes of his family? Death, no doubt, relieves many, and misery drags on the rest to a state of feeble manhood. The same observation applies to the peasant and his landlord.

The poor, then, have no dependence, but on the humanity and generosity of the rich, and in proportion as the latter are virtuous or wicked, the poor are more or less miserable. This is exemplified by the state of the poor in England and Ireland.

In England, where the land-holders are more temperate, and humane, and less dissipated, the poor are better paid, though they enjoy but little repose. In the latter country, the dissipation and hard character of the Irish gentlemen, render the state of the peasant very miserable, though both countries are governed by nearly the same laws.

In France, where they have been obliged, in the late revolution, to stretch out the hand of the law to draw the peasant from an abyss of misery, as soon as the establishment of government shall remove the fears of the rich, the abolition of taxes, feudal rights, &c. &c. will be demanded, either from the labor or purse of the poor; for the rich man has the same advantage over him in the barter of his labor, as an opulent usurer over the neces sitous borrower, and dictates the contract. If law interfere to relieve the poor, by fixing the quantity and price of labor, policy urges the competition of nations to demand much labor at a low price, in order that commerce may be extended, and moral motion propelled by ignorance, forms millions of miserable ducts or identities, to contaminate the stages of happiness, through which animate matter, in its eternal revolution, commutes the indissoluble connection of identity and Nature.

The only part of the religion of Nature that demands explication from its novelty and importance is, the connection between self and Nature.

Self is a material something arising from the aggregate mass of Nature and dissolving by separation of the parts into the same mass, which sends forth in other combinations the same something or indestructible matter, eternally connected with its integer as heat is with fire, or any other effect with its cause; The mode of this connection, human intellect cannot comprehend, but must assent to its existence. Its utility is alone sufficient to inspire this idea, as the happiness of man could not be perfect without it; for though the virtuous and benevolent idea, to will for yourself, might establish a system of temporal happiness, yet the mind would want grandeur and expansion to support that simple truth without the comprehensible doctrine of immortality, in the indisso luble connection with Nature, which gives us an eternal interest to remove all evil from the course of Nature, in which we ever have, and ever shall continue to exist.

Body and identity of man or manhood, like fire and heat, may be changed or commuted, and in portions what was fire may become man, and what was man become fire; the connection with Nature being the same in all its parts, animate or inanimate; but motion in the former has the power of procuring happy combinations or identities; and the volition that propels that motion is motived by happiness, which it procures to its present, and perpetuates to all future stages of its revolution into sensitive Nature, by which self, or the moral system, is temporally and eternally benefited.

The religion of Nature differs from invented religion, as the former adores the effect of motion, which is comprehensible, and the latter the cause of motion, which is incomprehensible.

The effect of moral motion, which is to procure happiness or well-being to all sensitive Nature, through the volition and intellectual faculty of man, proves self, or the moral system, the instrument of that motion, to be