from the distressing retention in the body of substances either superfluous or noxious; and what lengthy periods of exemption from disease and injury, have the boundless goodness and power of a wise and kind Creator provided and offered? Nor has his liberality been less abundant in providing for the gratification of those desires and feelings which originate from mental conception, or thought; usually styled emotious, affections, or passions. For each of them, and even for every grade of them, a suitable and adequate object of gratification has been devised and furnished. But copious as the provision, which God has made for gratifying these inferior principles of our nature, has been; the objects which he has provided and offered for the gratification of man's superior power, are immensely more numerous. Whatever exists in reality, or even in fancy, offers to contribute its part. But the contributions offered differ vastly, both in intensity and duration. Objects afford pleasure to the mind which contemplates them, or occupies itself in thinking about them, in proportion to the utility, beauty, grandeur, duration, and intellectuality which they exhibit. If objects be useless, hurtful, or of uncertain or short duration, no matter what their other qualities may be, they afford, to the contemplator, but little gratification. Hence it is that the objects with which we are conversant in this world please so little. Between the inutility and short duration of many of them, and while they last the uncertainty of their retaining their fitness or disposition to yield gratification, their power to confer happiness is greatly impaired. Hence the necessity, if permanent felicitiy is to be secured to a rational and moral creature like the human mind, that an object or objects of the greatest possible utility, beauty, grandeur, duration, and intellectuality be exhibited to it, as the constant objects of its contemplation or thought. With what strict truth and propriety, then, does Christ pronounce the knowledge of the true God, and of him whom he has sent into our world a messenger to man, to be the only certain source of eternal life and happiness to man: for the objects of this knowledge alone possess the properties, which can give to a rational being, confident of its own immortality, fearless and supreme delight?

Does any question the truth of Christ's assertion? Let him put it to the test. Let him despatch his swift messenger, send out quick as thought his excursive fancy, and let that fancy wing its rapid flight over hill and dale, over mountain and valley, over tea and land, through earth and air, and select the object or objects, God alone excepted, to which he dare confide the endless felicity of his immortal soul. Alas! vain would be the excursion, abortive the senseless attempt. Why then do intelligent beings, endowed with the noble gifts of reason and reflection, stupidly and obstinately pervert and abuse their rational nature? Why do they perversely persist in vain attempts to extort from creatures a happiness which is not theirs to give? Does not every creature resent the insulting demand? Do not all, with one voice, exclaim, 'Insult us not; ascribe not to our impotence a power which God alone commands. What you solicit is not ours to give. It is from friendly uninterrupted intercourse with your

Creator, not with us, that your happiness must come. It is his character, not ours, that must delight your souls. It is on his inexhaustible resources, and not our scanty acquisitions, that you must depend.' In short, nothing but the attributes of God, exhibited to the human mind, can give it that enjoyment which it incessantly and urgently craves. Why such an awful degree of mental restlessness every where displayed among the wretched inhabitants of our world? Can any reason be assigned for it, but the absence of God's perfections from their thoughts? Introduce these perfections, let them occupy the creature's thoughts, and all is quietude, peace, and rest. The mind has got just what suits it, and what it wanted.

How precious, then, is that volume, which clearly exhibits to our contemplation these divine attributes, and puts it in our power, at all times and in every condition, to sit down and enjoy this intellectual feast. Little do they know what peace, what enviable repose, what transcendant gratification they deny to their restless, distracted, miserable minds, who refuse them the ineffable delight which the knowledge and habitual contemplation of the divine character are capable of imparting to them.

It is further manifest, that there exists no remedy for any portion of the mental misery, for much of the physical wretchedness, and for all of the moral depravity, that have long disgraced and tormented the human family, and still continue to disgrace and torment it, but the knowledge of God, and the habitual employment of their thoughts on his nature and character. There can be no doubt, that the superior enjoyment derived from this occupation of their thoughts, if once tasted, would effectually eradicate from their souls all those desires, all those cravings, all those incessant pantings for the inferior gratification which men derive from employing their thoughts, desires, and corporal exertions about temporal things, and leave their minds at liberty to pursue their supreme felicity, without interruption or molestation.

It is also evident, that this enviable, this all important knowledge, can be acquired only by diligent, nay, incessant recourse to God's original information, to the divine message, just as it came from heaven, and stands recorded in sacred writ; and not to the endless and varient modifications, transformations, and misrepresentations of it, diffused through the world by self-conceited, self-authorized mortals; in their dogmas, creeds, confessions, formulas, commentaries, expositions, sermons, lectures, discourses, orations, arguments, tracts, &c. &c., by which they have left scarcely a vestige of God's original, plain, simple communication, in its original, intelligible state. Let no man dream, that recourse to these human figments is to transform his soul, into the intellectual and moral image of its maker, or pour into it that exquisite delight, which the unadulterated, unmixed milk of the divine word is intended and fitted to impart. God has, by means of his own information contained in his own word, interposed, between himself and the human mind, the thinnest veil, the most transparent medium that could be devised; but men have, by their daring interference with it, and clumsy operations on it, destroyed its heavenly texture, and

totally ruined its original transparency. Subjected to their pernicious operations, it no longer reflects, to the human mind, those heavenly objects whose likeness it was intended to exhibit distinctly, clearly, and correctly; but, in their stead, exhibits the dreams, reveries, fancies, and fantasms of doating religious demagogues, in endless succession. PHILALETHES.

THE following communication we submit to the curious, as a new subject is submitted to the student of the anatomy of the human constitution. Any thing so strongly marked with the attributes of good sense, reason, and philosophy, will give an impulse to the mind, and may probably be the occasion of some useful reflections.-Ed.

To Archippus.

IN the judgment of Philalethes you have, in a few words, and with great accuracy, stated, at least, the principal sources of all that tremendous mass of error, nonsense, superstition, and falsehood, which have long deluged, and still continue to deluge the nominally christian part of this world. Hideous and pernicious as this mass is, it has, no doubt, been produced chiefly by unscriptural views, and a false philosophy of the human mind. But whether by the phrase unscriptural views, Archippus and Philalethes mean precisely the same thing, is, perhaps, doubtful. Philalethes considers all views, all conceptions as unscriptural, which are not expressly announced in the explicit declarations of the divine message. When men cease to regard God's explicit declarations as the boundary of their religious knowledge, and venture to add to these declarations cobwebs spun out of their own brains, among which Philalethes ranks all facts not explicitly asserted in sacred writ, all inferences which have no better foundation than human sagacity, all conjectures, conceits, and constructions fabricated by the human fancy; Philalethes regards all this additional work as unscriptural, that is, as not contained in, nor sustained by scripture. But to render his meaning still more certain, and the line of discrimination, which he has drawn, still more clear, he will advert to some facts, recorded in the first pages of Genesis, respecting Adam's creation and other occurrences, which he regards as among the explicit declarations of God on these topics, and as containing all the certain information which God has thought fit to communicate to us respecting them.

In the 27th verse of the first chapter, the divine spirit informs us expressly, that God created man in his own image or likeness, or, in other words, that God was the original or pattern in imitation of which man was formed. But as to the degree of resemblance which existed between the original and the copy, or in what properties the resemblance consisted, the spirit has given us no information. All, therefore, which men have advanced respecting the degree and nature of this resemblance is mere fiction, entirely devoid of certainty, and unworthy of belief. Nay, it is even worse, it is an impious allegation

that God has not given us satisfactory information on this subject, and a presumptuous declaration, that we will have more, whether he would or not. It is true, that in other parts of sacred writ, we are informed that God is an intelligent and immortal being, and from experience, we discover that man is an intelligent, and from scripture, that he is an immortal creature. That there was, then, a resemblance between man and his maker, with respect to intelligence and immortality, established in the act of creation, we cannot doubt; though not formally asserted by the divine spirit, in his account of man's creation. There is another point in which man bore some resemblance to his maker; but it was generated not by the act of creation, nor constituted any part of God's image impressed on the nature of man at his creation; but by an act subsequently performed: I mean the resemblance between God's universal sovereignty, and man's limited dominion ever the terrestrial animals. The above certainly contains all the divine information, which God has communicated to us, respecting the resemblance to himself which he impressed on his creature man, when he created him. All beside is mere human reverie, with which no Christian ought to suffer the purity of his faith to be polluted.

This is

In verses 19th and 20th, second chapter, the spirit of truth tells us, that the great absolute Sovereign, soon after Adam was created, commanded all the animal tribes resident on the earth or in the air, to appear before their newly constituted sovereign to receive names, and that Adam performed the work proposed to him with ease. evidently all the information, which the divine spirit has judged it proper to communicate respecting this occurrence. But men, not satisfied with God's scanty allowance, have added to it dreams, fancies, reveries, conjectures and fictions of their own, in marvellous quantity. They tell us, that in order to enable Adam to perform this most simple operation, which thousands of his posterity perform with the utmost facility every day, it was necessary not only to make him an intelligent being capable of exercising his rational nature, and of acquiring information in the ordinary way, and through the ordinary means, and of performing his mental operations as other intelligent beings do; but to endow his mind with innate, or rather connate information, that is, to make him not a human being, but a being of an order of whose existence we have never heard. For my part, to enable Adam to perform this feat, which many seem to regard as a super-human achievement, I can conceive nothing necessary but such a measure of intellect as has been bestowed on millions of his posterity, who are never at a loss to invent a suitable name for any unnamed object that may be presented to them. That God bestowed at his creation on Adam's mind a capacity to perform all the operations which the human mind is now able to perform, we cannot doubt; but that he endued it with any peculiar sort or degree of intellection is a fiction no where asserted in scripture, and utterly incredible. God, when he created Adam, gave him the necessary capacity and left him to make his acquisitions, as he has left all his posterity, by attention to offered information, and observation of objects presented to his notice.

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But men have not been contented with ascribing to Adam's mind, when just created, intellectual properties,which neither it,nor any other created mind, so far as we know, ever possessed; but they have ascribed to it, what is physically impossible, moral qualities, such as knowledge, righteousness, holiness, &c.; that is, anteriorly to action, they ascribe to it what can be acquired only by action. Who ever acquired knowledge without mental action? Who ever became righteous, but by acting conformably to a prescribed rule? And who or what ever became holy, but by being separated to some particular object or purpose? How different are these epithets, from that which God applies to Adam's mind among the other creatures, which he had formed? God, when he viewed it among his other works, pronounced it good, fit to perform all the functions for whose performance it was made; but says nothing of its knowledge, righteousness, or holiness: for these were qualities not yet possessed by it; nay, properties of which it was absolutely incapable, before it had performed the actions necessary to their acquisition. Neither knowledge, righteousness, nor holiness is natural or inherent, but are acquired or contingent properties of the human mind. Adam's mind, therefore, when it was created, had to acquire these contingent qualities, as all other minds have.

Over the innumerable fictions and fancies, which men have added to the brief and simple account, which the spirit gives respecting the vegetable kingdom, Gen. ii. 5, 6., I pass in silence; and proceed to notice the proof which many produce in support of their ascription to to Adam's mind, not only of uncommon, but miraculous endowment, The proof consists in this, that when Eve was first presented to his sight, he perceived that she bore no resemblance to any female among the inferior animals, but exhibited the very image, or rather duplicate of himself; or, in other words, distinguished a human being from a brute.

We have now to notice the most marvellous scene of dreaming, fiction, and fable, to which the spirit's simple account of Eve's deception disobedience, and its consequences, has given occasion.

1. With respect to the animal which apparently deceived Eve, the divine spirit has told us, that it was the most sagacious, acute, or cunning of all the inferior animals; and that it possessed the faculty of speech is also certain, for it exercised it on that occasion: but men, not contented with this limited portion of divine information, have spun endless cobwebs about it out of their own heads, and wearied themselves in abortive attempts to ascertain, what God had determined they should never ascertain, the sort or species of animals to which it belonged, and the artifices which it practised on that occasion. Such attempts, however, are not only vain and contemptible, but they are impious. Had God thought more extensive information concerning this animal and its actions, necessary or useful to man, he would, no doubt, have imparted it: his withholding it, then, is a proof that he thought differently.