stantly shaping a religion of its own; inventing a burlesque compound of romance, fable, and metaphysics, for its creed; and establishing a worship half borrowed from Paganism, and half from the opera. But the extravagance of public folly was incomplete, and the pollution unworthy of Atheism, until Paris saw a public harlot placed upon the altar! and the whole legislature actually bowing down with the most solemn formalities of worship to this living emblem of impurity. Yet Burke's declaration of the incompatibility of Atheism with the public understanding was realized with almost equal speed. Even so early as 1793, and even from the lips of Robespierre, the confession was wrung, that the belief in a God was essential. While this consummate criminal, the demoniac of the Revolution, was decreeing, in the spirit of Paganism, a succession of fêtes, or days of worship, to Justice, Modesty, Truth, Friendship, and other poetic idolisms of his new Pantheon; he pronounced a discourse in the Convention on the necessity of acknowledging a God. "The idea of a Supreme Being," he exclaimed, "and of the immortality of the soul, is a continual call to justice. It is therefore a social and republican principle. Who has authorised you to declare that a Deity does not exist? Oh, you who support so arid a doctrine, what advantage do you expect to derive from the principle, that a blind fatality regulates the affairs of men, and that the soul is nothing but a breath of air impelled towards the tomb? Will the idea of nonentity inspire man with more elevated sentiments than that

of immortality? Will it awaken more respect for others or himself; more courage to resist tyranny, greater contempt for pleasure or death? You, who regret a virtuous friend, can you endure the thought that his noblest part has not escaped dissolution? You who weep over the remains of a child or a wife, are you consoled by the thought that a handful of dust is all that remains of the beloved object? You, the unfortunate, who expire under the stroke of the assassin, is not your last voice raised to appeal to the justice of the Most High? Innocence on the scaffold, supported by such thoughts, makes the tyrant turn pale on his triumphal car. Could such an ascendant be felt, if the tomb levelled alike the oppressor and his victim."

How much does this acknowledgement remind us of the self-condemning confessions of the enemies of God and man in earlier times! We might almost think that we saw the false prophet who was summoned to curse the righteous cause, contrained to bless; or hear the accents of one of those sons of irreparable ruin, whose knowledge only increases their crime and their misery, who "believe and tremble.”

CHAPTER IV.

Burke's Theory of Religious Establishments-Value of Religion to Society-Public Provision for its teaching-Fruitlessness of the French Revolution.

BURKE pursues the argument for an authorized, legal form of worship, as indispensable to the uses and dignity of religion. "Instead of quarrelling with establishments, as some do, who have made a philosophy and a religion of their hostility to such institutions, we cleave closely to them. We are resolved to keep an established Church, an established Monarchy, an established Aristocracy, and an established Democracy, each in the degree it exists, and in no greater. I speak of the Church establishment first. It is first, and last, and midst in our minds. For, taking ground on that religious system, of which we are now in possession, we continue to act on the early received and uniformly continued sense of mankind. That sense, not only like a wise architect, has built up the august fabric of states, but, like a provident proprietor, to preserve the structure from profanation and ruin, as a

sacred temple, purged from all the impurities of fraud, and violence, and injustice, and tyranny, hath solemnly and for ever consecrated the commonwealth, and all that officiate in it. This consecration is made, that all who administer in the government of men, in which they stand representatives of the Deity himself, should have high and worthy notions of their function and distinction; that their hope should be full of immortality; that they should not look to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and transient praise of the vulgar, but to a solid and permanent existence, in the permanent part of their nature, and to a permanent fame and glory in the example they leave, as a rich inheritance to the world.

"Such sublime principles ought to be infused into persons of exalted situations; and religious establishments ought to be provided, that they may continually revive and enforce them. Every sort of moral, every sort of civil, every sort of politic institution, aiding the rational and natural ties that connect the human understanding and affections to the divine, are not more than necessary, in order to build up that wonderful structure, Man, whose prerogative it is to be in a great degree a creature of his own making; and who, when made as he ought to be, is destined to hold no trivial place in the creation. But, wherever man is put over man, as the better nature ought ever to preside; in that case more particularly, he should as nearly as possible be approximated to his perfection. **** To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatili

ty, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the State, that no man should approach, to look into its defects or corruptions, but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the State as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country, who are prompt rashly to hack their aged parent in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's life.

"Society is, indeed, a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest, may be dissolved at pleasure. But the State ought not to be considered a mere partnership agreement, taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved at the fancy of the parties. It is not a partnership in things subservient to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state, is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not