his imbecility and misery, rather than from any reasoning, is led to seek
protection from that Being, on whom he and all nature is dependent. So
anxious or so tedious are even the best scenes of life, that futurity is
still the object of all our hopes and fears. We incessantly look forward,
and endeavour, by prayers, adoration, and sacrifice, to appease those
unknown powers, whom we find, by experience, so able to afflict and
oppress us. Wretched creatures that we are! what resource for us amidst
the innumerable ills of life, did not religion suggest some methods of
atonement, and appease those terrors with which we are incessantly
agitated and tormented?

I am indeed persuaded, said PHILO, that the best, and indeed the only
method of bringing every one to a due sense of religion, is by just
representations of the misery and wickedness of men. And for that purpose
a talent of eloquence and strong imagery is more requisite than that of
reasoning and argument. For is it necessary to prove what every one feels
within himself? It is only necessary to make us feel it, if possible,
more intimately and sensibly.

The people, indeed, replied DEMEA, are sufficiently convinced of this
great and melancholy truth. The miseries of life; the unhappiness of man;
the general corruptions of our nature; the unsatisfactory enjoyment of
pleasures, riches, honours; these phrases have become almost proverbial
in all languages. And who can doubt of what all men declare from their
own immediate feeling and experience?

In this point, said PHILO, the learned are perfectly agreed with the
vulgar; and in all letters, sacred and profane, the topic of human misery
has been insisted on with the most pathetic eloquence that sorrow and
melancholy could inspire. The poets, who speak from sentiment, without a