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The truths which are of vital importance to man, are those revealed in the scriptures. A necessity for this revelation, under the circumstances of the case, arose from the fact, that those truths were not only not self-evident, but they were incapable of a demonstration. Doctor Paley, who has brought to the contemplation of this subject, a degree of clearness and ingenuity rarely equalled, has endeavored to show that the being of a God was fairly deducible from the ingenuity and evident design of the visible creation. I concede to him as a logician, the highest order of merit. But I deny that men could come to the conclusion he argues for, if their minds had not been previously prepared for that conclusion, by the revelation the reasoner affects not to use. No man ever has obtained a knowledge of the true God, so far as we are informed, unless by revelation. The strange, incoherent mythological views of the heathen, are the greatest advance towards this knowledge, which man has ever made, unaided by the knowledge the scriptures reveal. If doctor Paley had found one heathen, who, by searching, had found out God, he would have found one fact in support of his logic; but since he has neither found, nor pretended to find a solitary instance like this, his logic must fall like the fictions of the heathen to the dust. If for six, thousand years, the heathen had not discovered his Maker, would six thousand more increase the chances of his success, or multiply the difficulties in the way of it? Unquestionably the latter. The longer man was estranged from his Maker, the more inveterate became his blindness. His case had become desperate beyond the twinkling of a hope: hence the necessity for a revelation. Our Creator would hardly have stooped to reveal what he had endowed man with ability to find out. A supposition to the contrary, nullifies itself. Doctor Paley's logic would stand well enough, if it had any thing to stand en. But I find like other sermonizers, I have neglected the subject I began with. Let us return to that.
If the statement "all men are created equal," had been found among the passages of scripture, which reveal to us the information, "that the day is set when God will judge the world in righteousness,"—had the statement been invested with the sanctity such company would give it; then indeed should I have yielded my assent to its truth, not as a matter of reason, but of faith: and
