sole of its foot. Oh, had I those commanding powers of eloquence and of intellect which are possessed by my patron, the great and good man on whose accents we yesterday hung with rapture and delight, I would appeal to your understandings and your hearts, in behalf of my native land. I would picture to you the feuds and animosities, the spirit of deadly hate that stalks at noon-day over that unhappy country; I would describe to you the machinery of that exclusively proselytizing system which has arrayed Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Catholic, rent asunder the bonds of society, widened the gulf between the affections of the people, so that not a friendly thought can pass from one side to the other; I would show you Protestants understanding not one particle of genuine Protestant principle, haranguing the fiendish scum of the population under orange and purple banners; I would describe to you Protestant parents imitating the example of the old Carthaginian, dragging forward their children to the altars of intolerance, and compelling them to swear eternal hatred to the civil and religious freedom of their fellows; I would show you the tender minds of youth imbibing the deadly prejudices which brutalise mature humanity, yet willing to be at peace; I would place these children before you, and let them ask you for themselves, Can you, as Christians, behold the divisions which are degrading our fathers and ourselves—which spring from that jealousy and hatred and repulsive feeling, with which we have been taught to regard those who bear the common image of our Creator, and will you not seek to heal these heart-burning divisions by the influences of a kindlier education-will you not help us to live, if not in profession of the same creed, at least as children of the same Heavenly Parent?' And I do not think you could refuse them; and if you could not, I ask you to record the feeling by adopting this Resolution."

The Rev. A. Macdonald said "I obtrude myself on your notice, before the business of this meeting is concluded, to propose a vote of thanks to Mr. Harris. The Greeks fabled that Atlas bore the earth on his shoulders, but I rise to propose a vote of thanks to the man who, without any fable, and more than any here present, has borne the responsibility, and the anxiety, and the labour of conducting this Association. I propose the thanks of this meeting should be tendered to the man, who, born an Englishman, has adopted Scotland as his country-to the man, who, if he could stoop to profess the well-paid doctrines of the powers that be,' would soon, to borrow the language Mr. Montgomery has already applied to him, have his brow dishonoured by a mitre-to the man, who, like the Angel of Knowledge, has planted one foot on the Clyde and the other on dry land, and opening the book of life, has cried aloud to the people,read, and judge for yourselves'-the man who, from the pulpit and the press, has strenuously repelled the hosts of orthodoxy-the man who has persevered in his purpose amidst animosity, scorn, and opposition. We must honour him who firmly and calmly persists in effecting noble purposes in defiance of difficulty--who never despairs of the cause of truth and man-who, though he cannot command success, continues to do his duty, confiding the result to that wise and beneficent Power who is conducting all things to a benevolent and sublime issue."

The Resolution was received with acclamation, the Chairman proposing "one cheer more," which was cordially responded to. Thanks were then given to the Chairman, for the admirable manner in which he had presided over the lengthened but interesting meeting; and, at ten o'clock, the Rev. H. Clarke concluded with prayer.

CHRISTIAN PIONEER.

No. 74.

OCTOBER, 1832.

Vol. VII.

Remarks on Paine's Age of Reason, in a series of Letters addressed to the Readers of the Christian Pioneer.

LETTER IV.

MY CHRISTIAN FRIENDS,-Among the tokens by which Christianity has marked its progress down to the present day, by no means the least important is the literature of which it has been the creator. Whence mainly is it that the Greek and Roman nations are known to the bulk of the present generation? Few comparatively have seen with their own eyes, the ruined temples and mouldering walls, the yet living statue, and the deathless medal by which the existence of these nations is attested to the learned; but the writings of Homer and Cicero are read in our schools in the original, and in our cottages, translated into the vernacular tongue. Thus a testimony pervades the land, as constraining as it is silent. A belief in the existence of these nations, becomes a portion of the faith of youth, and from youth passes unchecked into all the subsequent periods of life, the force of which may be learned by imagining the wonder that the countenance would express at the boldness of the man who should venture to deny that there ever was an Athens for Pericles to sway, adorn, and enlighten, or a Rome for an Augustus to convert from brick into marble. In a degree, this wonder may be understood, from observing the face of a youth, who, having for months been engaged in deciphering the poetry of Homer, is, for the first time told, that modern criticism has rendered it doubtful, if the blind and wandering minstrel of his young fancies and young affections, is, after all, any thing more than a name. The works of the great men of antiquity, give, not only to them but the nations to whom they belonged, a living form and pressure, even now, when above two thousand years are gone, since they burned with the indignation of outraged patriotism, or the sacred flame of poetic fancy and emotion. We look upon or into their works, and think at once, and hold our thoughts like convictions, of those to whom the voice of ages has assigned them. A

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similar effect would have taken place, as in fact it did take place, before it became the fashion to question their authenticity, in the instance of the several portions of the New Testament, but for the fact that doubts have been raised by the enemies of religion. These doubts have, as in the present case, called forth defences; sometimes the reply has been followed by a rejoinder, and the rejoinder led other combatants to gird on their armour, while, in the midst of this learned warfare, one thing became clearer than any other, at least to the short-sighted, that wherever truth was, much might be said on both sides! In this conclusion, the enemy's end was answered. Scepticism was what he aimed to produce, at least, if he could not occasion absolute unbelief. Now there is no subject, however certain in itself, in which the same result might not be brought about by ordinary dexterity in the use of the weapons of controversy. Most men think their senses good guides, and trust them implicitly in the business of life; but let a bold and skilful swordsman but wield his intellectual weapon, and soon would some doubt even of the existence of matter, and have serious questions if they were the same persons as they were a year previously, since no argument to prove their identity could be adduced, to which plausible if not solid objections might not be taken. Indeed it requires but little metaphysical skill, so to confound the understanding of the many, as to give in them a novel illustration of the words of Scripture, making them feel, that "seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."

If, then, the concurrent voice, with here and there an exception, which, by its solitariness, serves only to make the many-tongued testimony seem more numerous and forcible if the concurrent voice of antiquity assures the world, and justly, of the authenticity of the classic authors, and therein of the existence and institutions of the classic nations, I see not why a voice, equally concurrent at least, should not lead the mind from Matthew's Gospel to Matthew himself, and from the historian to him of whom he wrote and testified. I point then to our sacred books, as evidence, by their very existence, of Jesus and his doctrine; nor can a doubt of their authenticity be mooted, which would not bear equally hard, if hard at all, on the writings of the poets and statesmen of ancient days. Nay, we may bring the argument down nearer to our own times.

Who that has read Paradise Lost, has ever questioned the existence of Milton? Who that has read his noble defence of the liberty of the press, has questioned, that England was in his days governed by the Commons House of Parliament, and suffered nearly as much in the restriction of its liberty, as under the tyrant to whose power it succeeded? Who that has read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, without a full conviction, that some time in the past, a person whose name was Gibbon, and whose mind was cultivated with learning, and perverted by scepticism, had lived, read, and wrote? And what unbeliever, when engaged in collecting weapons of assault from the pages of Voltaire or Paine, had not his mind imbued with the idea of the author as well as the work? Yet if you deny that Voltaire assailed religion in France, and Paine in England, what would the majority of their admirers have to reply? Would they point to their works? We point to the works of John and Paul. Would they plead the evidence of historians? The plea will serve us at least as well as them. Do they urge the notoriety of the fact, and chide the excess of scepticism, which arrays itself against the voice of many generations? The concession made in this appeal, will establish the very institutions, to the uprooting of which, they devote their lives. Do they as a last resort, have recourse to the quotations of the works of their leaders in scepticism, made by cotemporaneous and subsequent writers? Do they say, "here is a passage cited by one, and here a part explained by another"? The evidence is good, but no less good for Christians than for sceptics.

And this leads me to remark, that independently of the books of the New Testament, which are in themselves, by their very existence, proofs of the leading facts of Christianity, a literature has been created by the mission of Christ, which, taking it from the present hour, as we have done in the previous cases, leads up the mind to Jesus himself. The topic which I have now opened out, is of vast extent and great fertility. The impress of . Christianity is marked most legibly in the literary productions of all nations in all ages, with whom it has come into contact. To say nothing of its influence on the general tone of literature in the present age, have we not our Cowper and our Young, in whose works, they who run may read; and the way-faring man, though a fool,

cannot mistake the multiplied evidences of the impregnation of the minds of these poets, if not with the pure spirit of Christ, yet with the spirit of a prevalent Christianity. Now I know of no age in which evidences of a similar nature might not be found. In every period, from the nineteenth to the second, if not to the first century, you may trace in the general style of literary productions, and specially in certain works more than commonly imbued with a religious spirit, in poetry, in oratory, in history, in theology, in metaphysics, in taste, in style, in the whole texture and spirit of the performance, the influence of a religion which can be identified with no other than the Gospel. It would be vain to attempt to adduce particular instances out of hosts of facts, that are scarcely outnumbered by the stars of heaven. Yet we may allude to one striking circumstance. In the second, and indeed in the first century, Gentile philosophy underwent an almost entire change. Principles were supported which had been unknown or reprobated. Efforts were made which indicated new zeal, as well as the tottering of an old cause. Pretensions were advanced, in which fiction laboured to do the work of reality, and in which an unintended homage was paid to an excellence that was denied in word, but acknowledged by the stronger and truer language of implication. A tone of spirituality, which soon degenerated into mysticism, spread itself over literary productions, making the fact plain, that what they were designed to counterfeit, and in counterfeiting oppose, was more purely spiritual, even than the lucubrations of Plato; while the wish that was evinced, to enlighten the many and reform the ignorant, proved beyond a doubt, that it was also more practical and benign than his instructions, who was said to have brought philosophy down from heaven to dwell among And thus the Eclectic philosophy, as the system to which I have alluded, was called, while it took, without express acknowledgment, the principles of Christ, and compounded them with those of Socrates, Aristotle, and Cicero, to frame a weapon wherewith to oppose Christ, has in fact furnished us with an evidence of the power of Christianity, while yet in its cradle, and as of its early power so of its early birth, till we are carried from the chair of philosophy to the manger and the cross.

men.

You can enter few public or private libraries in this or any other civilized kingdom, but your eye is struck with