inanimate objects, but this is a very false notion of the nature of our
faith; we regard them merely as vivid characters representing spiritual
existences and we no more worship them than the Protestant does his Bible
when he kisses it under a solemn religious adjuration. The past, the
present, and the future being the same to the infinite and divine
Intelligence, and man being created in love for the purposes of
happiness, the moral and religious discipline to which he was submitted
was in strict conformity to his progressive faculties and to the primary
laws of his nature. It is but a rude analogy, yet it is the only one I
can find, that of comparing the Supreme Being to a wise and good father
who, to secure the well-being of his offspring, is obliged to adopt a
system of rewards and punishments in which the senses at first and
afterwards the imagination and reason are concerned; he terrifies them by
the example of others, awakens their love of glory by pointing out the
distinction and the happiness gained by superior men by adopting a
particular line of conduct; he uses at first the rod, and gradually
substitutes for it the fear of immediate shame; and having awakened the
fear of shame and the love of praise or honour with respect to temporary
and immediate actions he extends them to the conduct of the whole of
life, and makes what was a momentary feeling a permanent and immutable
principle. And obedience in the child to the will of such a parent may
be compared to faith in and obedience to the will of the Supreme Being;
and a wayward and disobedient child who reasons upon and doubts the
utility of the discipline of such a father is much in the same state in
which the adult man is who doubts if there be good in the decrees of
Providence and who questions the harmony of the plan of the moral
universe.

_Onu_.--Allowing the perfection of your moral scheme of religion and its
fitness for the nature of man, I find it impossible to believe the