contrived, designed, or adapted, they could not _deny_ there must have
been at least one Being to contrive, design, or adapt; but they see no
analogy between a watch made with hands out of something, and a universe
made without hands out of nothing--Atheists are unable to perceive the
least resemblance between the circumstance of one intelligent body
re-forming or changing the condition of some other body, intelligent or
non-intelligent, and the circumstance of a bodiless Being creating all
bodies; of a partless Being acting upon all parts; and of a passionless
Being generating and regulating all passions. Atheists consider the
general course of nature, though strangely unheeded, does proclaim with
'most miraculous organ,' that dogmatisers about any such 'figment of
imagination,' would, in a rational community, be viewed with the same
feelings of compassion, which, even in these irrational days, are
exhibited towards confirmed lunatics.

The Author was recently passing an evening with some pleasant people in
Ashton-under-Lyne, one of whom related that before the schoolmaster had
much progress in that _devil dusted_ neighbourhood, a labouring man
walking out one fine night, saw on the ground a watch, whose ticking was
distinctly audible; but never before having seen anything of the kind he
thought it a living creature, and full of fear ran back among his
neighbours, exclaiming that he had seen a most marvellous thing, for
which he could conceive of no better name than CLICKMITOAD. After
recovering from their surprise and terror, this 'bold peasant' and his
neighbours, all armed with pokers or ether formidable weapons, crept up
to the ill-starred ticker, and smashed it to pieces.

The moral of this anecdote is no mystery. Our clickmitoadist had never
seen watches, knew nothing about watches, and hearing as well as seeing
one for the first time, naturally judged it must be an animal. Readers