lead them still farther astray, in a labyrinth of vice, delusion, and
wretchedness. This is incontrovertibly evident, both from past and
present experience; and we may defy her most eloquent advocates to
produce a single instance in which she has enlightened or reformed
mankind. If, as is often asserted, she is able to guide us in the path
of truth and happiness, why has she ever suffered her votaries to
remain a prey to vice and ignorance. Why did she not teach the learned
Egyptians to abstain from worshiping their leeks and onions? Why not
instruct the polished Greeks to renounce their sixty thousand gods?
Why not persuade the enlightened Romans to abstain from adoring their
deified murderers? Why not prevail on the wealthy Phoenicians to refrain
from sacrificing their infants to Saturn? Or, if it was a task beyond
her power to enlighten the ignorant multitude, reform their barbarous
and abominable superstitions, and teach them that they were immortal
beings, why did she not, at least, instruct their philosophers in the
great doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which they so earnestly
labored in vain to discover? They enjoyed the light of reason and
natural religion, in its fullest extent, yet so far were they from
ascertaining the nature of our future and eternal existence, that
they--could not determine whether we should exist at all Bevon the
grave; nor could all their advantages preserve them from the grossest
errors, and the most unnatural crimes.

* * * * *


=_Joseph S. Buckminster, 1784-1812._= (Manual, p. 480.)

From the "Sermons."