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solve: we have minds of vast intellectual powers, and souls of vast desire drawn up to heaven ; and yet see no infinite mind existing that bestowed the one, and excited the other: no infinite mind to direct the one to some worthy purpose, and to satisfy the other with some worthy object. It is equally impossible that we should know our duty; for our first and most important obligations spring from our sense of dependence on an Almighty Creator, and our experience of the goodness of an all-gracious benefactor. And what worthy and generous motive can we have to the sacred offices of benevolence, if we know not that we are by a wise, all-disposing mind one great community—endowed by him with generous affections and instincts of mutual sympathy, and designed to pursue one ultimate end, the good of each other.
But let us advance and contemplate the bad influence which Atheism must necessarily have on virtue and morality, and the strong support that will be derived to all the human and social virtues from the belief and acknowledgment of a Supreme Governor of the world.
We may allow that various strong motives to the practice of all kinds of goodness arise from the attractive and amiable nature of virtue itself, independently of any positive law or constitution whatever; and that an Atheist may feel the force of them, and be just, beneficient, and temperate, because these virtues have in them something that is amiable and worthy of praise. But it must appear evident that these motives must be stronger upon the acknowledgment of a Deity, than upon any scheme which denies him. Upon both
