the particular mode of that great intervention is the most natural, and that which we should have been most apt to expect. It is only by attention to the admirable uniformity of the works of the Almighty, and to reasonings from those things which we distinctly know, that it is possible to form proper conclusions as to those which are more hid from us. Now, the redemption of the human race by a Mediator, is most analogous and conformable to what our observation shews us to happen in every other department of life. It was therefore what we should have most readily expected in the administration of Providence; and the most likely to take place in his dispensations towards man. In our sickness he provides us a physician in our difficulties, a counsellor in our distresses, a friend. Was it not therefore natural to expect that our relief from the greatest of all evils-our freedom from the bonds of sin, and our redemption from its most fatal consequen

ces, should be accomplished by similar means; and that a Mediator should be given us to our eternal salvation?

But it is not merely from general reasonings like these that we can shew the truth of our religion. The testimony of our faith. can bear a minute scrutiny. The particular circumstances of its history, viewing it in contrast with that of the nations of the earth; the foretelling of it by prophecy; and the proofs of it by miracles, combine to establish the truth of it in a clear and satisfactory manner. To each of these respective topics, in their order, I shall, in a few words, soicit your attention.

CHAP. II.

TRACING the history of natural religion from those early stages of society when it first appears, we shall find that, among rude uncultivated men, it is not the wisdom and design perceivable in the universe that give the first impressions of Deity; or stamp upon the human mind the first ideas of supernatural power. Conceptions like these are much too enlarged for intellect so gross; and far beyond the reach of such limited observers. The order of nature, the rising and setting sun, the changeful, yet regular, phases of the moon, and the correct rotation of the seasons, are common; and move not the mind of un

informed man. It is in the rare phenomena of nature, and in the striking, but various and contrary, events of human life, that he first recognises

invisible power. Does prosperity

attend his arms, while famine desolates his country? Has he been successful in commerce, while his fields have been deluged by the storm? All of those events he at once ascribes to superior agency; and, as they are so opposite and various in themselves, he at once also concludes, they must be the operations of opposite and various beings. Hence, in those periods of society which I have mentioned, men are, by nature, polytheists, or the worshippers of many gods; and the whole of their doctrines and practice are suited to such belief. It is only by an extensive knowledge of nature, by philosophical observation and research, and by a careful attention to causes and effects, that the unassisted reason of man can attain to the idea of the unityof God; and the true system of natural religion. It is by these only that the

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mind can reach the conception of what a great philosopher has called "the adjustment of every thing to every thing," and can reconcile those contrary and jarring appearances, which he every where sees around him, to that beautiful arrangement and uniformity of design which really exist in the universe. But such observation and research, and attention to cause and effect, are not the common inheritance of a barbarous or a rude people. Such heights of the knowledge of true religion, by the unaided reason of man, have been the gift only of the sublimest genius in a more advanced stage of society; and it is an established maxim of the philosophers, that ignorant and uncultivated men are naturally, and in the common course of events, gross polytheists and idolaters. "Were a traveller," says Mr. Hume, "to transport himself into any unknown "region, if he found inhabitants cultivated with arts and sciences,

Mr. Hume.