the only god or intelligence that ought to command the veneration of mankind, and recognized under the unitary attribute of utility to the moral system, or recognized self.

When wisdom opens on the mind of man, self feels an inceptive expansion, which in a parallel progress with its cause, leads the mind to a view of the extensive chain of all Nature, whose extremes are infinite and undiscoverable; but such a length of it is manifested, as shows the mind how the motion of one link agitates the whole, and that the least violence committed on a fly, agitates the whole chain, and communicates its vibration to all sensitive Nature.

Let us suppose that a man, who is incommoded by a fly, instead of driving it away, kills it. Utility to the system of Nature, the only standard of moral motion or action, may be applied to this act in the following manner: The fly in committing an act of violence on my body, agitates the chain of Nature: it is useful to remove this cause, but utility does not demand the annihilation of it by death, because it disproportions the means to the end, and infects, by a motive of resontment, the disposition of the mind for universal sympathy and benevolence. The destruction of the tiger and lion, when brought to the standard of utility, may be justified in proportion to the violence they cause the human species, which, as being the most happy existence of matter, is to be preferred to the brute. When the tiger infests the environs of man's habitation, utility requires him to be destroyed, and this would cause no vibration of the chain, because it would re-establish a counterpoise to the effect of the concussion began by the violence of the tiger; but when the hunter wantonly seeks him in the forest to destroy him, to promote the pleasure of the chase, the chain of Nature would be agitated by this act of remote utility; for utility must be urgent to justify the least act of violence, otherwise the volition becomes corrupted, and the source of moral motion being polluted, its streams would convey the cause of moral pestilence or vice over all humanity.

It is needless, after demonstrating the injury of violence to brutes on the whole system of self or Nature, to bring examples of the higher injury of that committed by man on man. This is discovered by the weakest minds in a state of barbarism, and laws and customs are established to prevent it; but these having only a partial and local effect, the violence of nation on nation has corrupted their domestic institutions, and the collective violence of despotic government has destroyed the peaceful effect of custom in private life, and the existence of man is dragged on, through a system of civil and moral vio lence, to death or a new birth. Error has so riveted her chains on humanity, that if any child of Nature inspired by sympathy, probity and wisdom, (which bind him to substitute the silken cord of self in system,) should dare to break the chain of civil and religious superstition, he would be regarded as an enemy to that Nature, whose cause he maintains, and whose reign he labors to establish.

The Thames that flows through London, though despised in its inanimate state, after it has passed the various conduits of water-engines, aqueducts and boilers, in a few hours is taken by digestion into the system of man-as a portion of whom, it views the proud turrets it has but just washed-eats of the fish it had served as an element-speaks as an orator in the senate-to direct, cleanse, or contract the stream of which a few hours before it formed a part, murmuring under Westminster bridge, and perhaps ascending to the acme of moral perfection in a child of Nature, it prepares happy identities for the remainder of its water, which rises in a few hours from the inanimate muddy bed of the Thames, to a state of sentiment of eternal and indissoluble connection with Nature, or intellectual existence, where wisdom systematizes happiness, and consciousness enjoys it; and where self, expanded to the boundaries of all Nature, moves in an irrefragable moral system to appropriate and universalize well-being to all sensitive matter, in time and eternity.

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The sheep and oxen that some hours ago filled Smithfield with their groans, under the cruel goads of brutal drivers, after passing the short stages of the slaughterhouse, kitchen and table, become orators in the houses of parliament, and dictate laws to relieve their derelicted and tormented relatives, into whose identities their connections may again return, and profit of that sympathy and probity, which was intended to relieve others. O religionists! here is a code of retributory laws, of rewards and punishments, if your intellectual idol of worship, had been supported by such a system, he would have been less odious, though not less imaginary.

Let the proud and ignorant tyrants of the earth, called kings, reflect that portions of the pompous body of royalty, carried in the coach of state, in the revolutions of a few moments, hours, days or years, may be in the humble body of the horse drawing some other proud and ignorant human identity; and that the incomprehensible, though avowed and conscious connection of identity and Nature is eternally changing its position, and the matter in human identity, the source and cause of moral motion, is capable of rendering that position happy or miserable to all sensitive Nature.

This reflection contains in itself all the principles of wisdom and virtue-shows the intimate connection of all matter, animate and inanimate-improves and augments that sympathy, which intuitively testifies to its truth, and renders coercion, the real enemy of happiness and well-being-abhorred and avoided-expands self into system, dissipates the chaos of the moral world, and reduces it to an order of system and revolution, similar to, and as unchangeable as that of the physical world.

The ignorant and unhappy being, whose volition dares. violate the liberty of any sensitive part of Nature, causes by that concussion such a vibration on sympathy, or the universal chain of Nature, as communicates a dreadful shock of misery to the present, and also to the future stages of his connection with Nature.

The cause of these concussions or criminal operations of the animal man is, ignorance; for if he had strength of intellect to comprehend the moral system of self, the centre, and sensitive Nature, the sphere, united, it would be as impossible for him to do the least act of violence, by forcing his will upon another, as to bore a hole in the ship on which he is a passenger, or pull down the lower story of a house of which he is an inhabitant, because the apartment was his own.

In the Religion of Nature all idea of merit and demerit is done away, for the only difference between men consists in the degree of wisdom they possess. All men being in pursuit of the same two objects, truth and hap piness, they will conduct self thereto, according to the different directions their weaker or stronger mental faculties furnish. The assassin, who murders, and the child of Nature, who saves a fellow-creature, have the same end in view, viz. happiness. The former in a state of ignorance mistakes the means, and the latter, through wisdom, takes the right means, and arrives at the object. The one is an object of pity, which having led a life of misery, is annihilated by the laws of society, and broke in pieces, like an ill-formed vessel, and returned to the great mass of clay, from whence he may be renewed in a more perfect form or existence.

This proves the necessity and infinite advantage and importance of augmenting the powers of thought or human intellect, which can only be done by a free communication of sentiment of all mankind; and all individuals or bodies of men, who under the influence of vulgar fears and prejudices, are alarmed at the progress of truth, and attempt, by force and violence, to restrain its operations, are traitors to self and Nature.

Truth, it is said, is dangerous; yes, it is indeed, but it is to error only; for truth carnot be dangerous to truth. This prejudice has been supported by mistaking relative for abstract truth.

The moment the beacon of wisdom, or universal truth in the system of self and Nature, is elevated, the rocks

of relative truth, mistaken as havens, are discovered, and the pilot, Reason, instead of casting anchor thereon, passes on with the gentle breeze of reform, to approximate the glorious and eternal haven of happiness to all sensitive Nature.

While the moral horizon is dark with error and prejudice, the rocks of relative truth are undiscovered, and the absurd and destructive truths, institutions of mankind, are sanctified. The inquisition in Spain, that moral monster, becomes benevolence and truth, when measured by the following considerations, or relative standard: If the Spaniards are permitted through the liberty of the press, to introduce heresy, or the Protestant religion, the consequence of this among a bigotted people, would be civil war and bloodshed.

The political inquisition, which reigns in every country on the globe, except America, reasons from the same relative standard, in order to rebel against the rights of Nature, and to impeach its prime minister, human thought, by barbarous restrictions on the liberty of the press, lest political heresies might produce dangerous reforms, by the violent means of insurrections.

This great variety of standard of opinion is the cause of all the moral evils which afflict human nature, who demands one absolute standard of wisdom, virtue, truth and happiness. This standard, the Religion of Nature has established with the clearest conviction, and teaches in the simplest modes for comprehension, to lead mankind to the acme of essence, intellectual existence, and an enlightened state of Nature.