fields, sanctified by the blood of martyrs, deprived of their ancient benefits? Why have those blessings been banished hence and transferred for so many ages to other nations and different climes ?

How long will man importune heaven with unjust complaint? How long, with vain clamors, will he accuse FATE as the author of his calamities? Will he then never open his eyes to the light, and his heart to the insinuations of truth and reason? The light of truth meets him everywhere; yet he sees it not! The voice of reason strikes his ear, and he hears it not! Unjust man! if for a moment you can suspend the delusion which fascinates your senses, if your heart can comprehend the language of reason, interrogate these ruins! Read the lessons which they present to you!-And you, witnesses of twenty different centuries, holy temples! venerable tombs! walls once so glorious, appear in the cause of Nature herself! Approach the tribunal of sound reason, and bear testimony against unjust accusations! come and confound the declamations of a false wisdom or hypocritical piety, and avenge the heavens and the earth of man who calumniates them!

What is that blind fatality, which without order and without law, sports with the destiny of mortals? What is that unjust necessity, which confounds the effect of actions, whether of wisdom or of folly? in what consist those anathemas of heaven over this land? Where is that divine malediction which perpetuates the abandonment of these fields? Say, monuments of past ages! have the heavens changed their laws and the earth its motion? are the fires of the sun extinct in the regions of space? do the seas no longer emit their vapors ? are the rains and the dews suspended in the air? do the mountains withhold their springs? are the streams dried up? and do the plants no longer bear fruit and seed? Answer, generation of falsehood and iniquity, has God deranged the primitive and settled order of things which he himself assigned to nature? Has heaven denied to earth, and earth to its inhabitants, the blessings which once they proffered? If nothing has changed in the creation, if the same means exist now which existed before, why then are not the pre

sent what former generations were? Ah! it is falsely that you accuse fate and heaven! it is injuriously that you refer to God the cause of your evils! Say, perverse and hypocritical race! if these places are desolate, if powerful cities are reduced to solitude, is it God who has caused their ruin? Is it his hand which has overthrown these walls, destroyed these temples, mutilated these columns, or is it the hand of man? Is it the arm of God which has carried the sword into your cities, and fire into your fields, which has slaughtered the people, burned the harvests, rooted up trees, and ravaged the pastures, or is it the hand of man? And when, after the destruction of crops, famine has ensued, is it the vengeance of God which has produced it, or the mad fury of mortals? When, sinking under famine, the people have fed on impure aliments, if pestilence ensues, is it the wrath of God which sends it, or the folly of man? When war, famine, and pestilence, have swept away the inhabitants, if the earth remains a desert, is it God who has depopulated it? Is it his ra pacity which robs the husbandman, ravages the fruitful fields, and wastes the earth, or is it the rapacity of those who govern? Is it his pride which excites murderous wars, or the pride of kings and their ministers? Is it the venality of his decisions which overthrows the fortunes of families, or the corruption of the organs of the law? Are they his passions which, under a thousand forms, torment individuals and nations, or are they the passions of man? And if, in the anguish of their miseries, they see not the remedies, is it the ignorance of God which is to blame, or their ignorance? Cease then, mortals, to accuse the decrees of FATE, or the judgments of the Divinity! If God is good, will he be the author of your misery? if he is just, will he be the accomplice of your crimes? No, the caprice of which man complains is not the caprice of destiny; the darkness that misleads his reason is not the darkness of God; the source of his calamities is not in the distant heavens, it is beside him on the earth; it is not concealed in the bosom of the divinity; it resides in man himself, he bears it in his own heart,

You murmur and say, How have an infidel people enjoyed the blessings of heaven and earth? Why is a holy

and chosen race less fortunate than impious generations ? Deluded man! where then is the contradiction which offends you? Where is the inconsistency which you impute to the justice of heaven? Take into your own hands the balance of rewards and punishments, of causes and effects. Say: when those infidels observed the laws of the heavens and of the earth, when they regulated their intelligent labors by the order of the seasons and course of the stars, ought God to have troubled the equilibrium of the universe to defeat their prudence? When their hands cultivated these fields with toil and care, should he have diverted the course of the rains, suspended the fertilizing dews, and caused thorns to spring up? When, to ren der these arid fields productive, their industry constructed aqueducts, dug canals, and led the distant waters across the desert, should he have dried up their sources in the mountains? Should he have blasted the harvests which art had created, wasted the plains which peace had peopled, overthrown cities which labor caused to flourish, disturbed in fine, the order established by the wisdom of man? And what is that infidelity which founded empires by prudence, defended them by valor, and strengthened them by justice; which erected powerful cities, formed capacious ports, drained pestilential marshes, covered the sea with ships, the earth with inhabitants; and, like the creative spirit, diffused life and motion through the world? If such be infidelity, what then is the true faith? Does sanctity consist in destruction? The God who peoples the air with birds, the earth with animals, the water with fishes; the God who animates all Nature, is he then a God of ruins and tombs? Does he ask devastations for homage, and conflagration for sacrifice? Requires he groans for hymns, murderers for votaries, a ravaged and desert earth for his temple? Yet such, holy and believing people, are your works! These are the fruits of your piety! You have massacred the people, burnt their cities, destroyed cultivation, reduced the earth to a solitude; and you ask the reward of your works! Miracles then must be performed, the laborers whom you cut off must be recalled to life, the walls reedified which you have overthrown, the harvests reproduced which you

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have destroyed, the waters gathered together which you have dispersed; the laws, in fine, of heaven and earth reversed; those laws, established by God himself, in demonstration of his magnificence and wisdom; those eternal laws anterior to all codes, to all the prophets; those immutable laws, which neither the passions, nor the ig norance of man can pervert. But that passion, which mistakes, that ignorance which observes not causes, and predicts no effect, has said in the folly of her heart: "Everything comes from chance; a blind fatality dispenses good and evil on the earth, so that prudence and wisdom cannot guard against it." Or else, assuming the language of hypocrisy, she has said: "All things are from God; he takes pleasure in deceiving wisdom, and confounding reason;" and Ignorance, applauding herself in her malice, has said: "Thus I shall not be inferior to that science which I detest: I will render useless that prudence which fatigues and torments me ;" and Cupidity has added: 'I will oppress the weak and devour the fruits of his labors; and I will say: It is God who decreed and fate who ordained it so.'-But by the laws of heaven and earth, and by the law which is written in the heart of man, the hypocrite shall be deceived in his guile, the oppressor in his rapacity; the sun shall change his course, before folly shall prevail over wisdom and knowledge, or stupidity surpass prudence in the delicate and sublime art of procuring to man his true enjoyments, and of building his happiness on a solid foundation.

Man vainly ascribes his misfortunes to obscure and imaginary agents; in vain he seeks for mysterious and remote causes of his ills. In the general order of the Universe, his condition is doubtless subject to inconvenience, and his existence overruled by superior powers; but those powers are neither the decrees of a blind fatality, nor the caprices of whimsical and fantastic beings; like the world of which he forms a part, man is governed by natural laws, regular in their course, consistent in their effects, immutable in their essence; and those laws, the common source of good and evil, are not written among the distant stars, or hidden in mysterious codes; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings, interwoven with their exis

tence, they are at all times and in all places present to man, they act upon his senses, they warn his understanding, and dispense to every action its reward or punishment. Let man then study these laws! let him comprehend his own nature, and the nature of the beings that surround him, and he will know the regulators of his des tiny; the causes of his evils, and the remedies he ought to apply.

When the secret power, which animates the Universe, formed the globe of the earth, he implanted in the beings by whom it is inhabited, essential properties which became the law of their individual motion, the bound of their reciprocal relations, the cause of the harmony of the whole; he thereby established a regular order of causes and effects, of principles and consequences, which, under an appearance of chance, governs the Universe, and maintains the equilibrium of the world: thus, he gave to fire, motion and activity; to air, elasticity; weight and density to matter; he made air lighter than water, metal heavier than earth, wood less cohesive than steel; he ordered the flame to ascend, stones to fall, plants to vege tate; man, who was to be exposed to the action of so many different beings, and whose frail life was nevertheless to be preserved, was endowed with the faculty of sensation. By this faculty, all action hurtful to his existence gives him a feeling of pain and evil; and every favorable action an impression of pleasure and happiness. By these sensations, man, sometimes averted from that which wounds his senses, sometimes allured towards that which soothes them, has been obliged to cherish and preserve his own life. Thus, self-love, the desire of happiness, aversion to pain, are the essential and primary laws imposed on man by NATURE herself; the laws which the directing power, whatever it be, has established for his government, and which, like those of motion in the physical world, are the simple and fruitful principle of whatever happens in the moral world.

Such then is the condition of man: on one side exposed to the action of the elements which surround him, he is subject to many inevitable evils: and if in this decree Nature has been severe, on the other hand, just and even