There is one Duty of the Free States of which I have not spoken; it is the duty of Faith in the intellectual and moral energies of the country, in its high destiny, and in the good Providence which has guided it through so many trials and perils to its present greatness.  We indeed suffer much, and deserve to suffer more.  Many dark pages are to be written in our history.  But generous seed is still sown in this nation’s mind.  Noble impulses are working here.  We are called to be witnesses to the world, of a freer, more equal, more humane, more enlightened social existence, than has yet been known.  May God raise us to a more thorough comprehension of our work!  May he give us faith in the good which we are summoned to achieve!  May he strengthen us to build up a prosperity not tainted by slavery, selfishness, or any wrong; but pure, innocent, righteous, and overflowing, through a just and generous intercourse, on all the nations of the earth!

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=_Edward Payson, 1733-1827,_= (Manual, p. 480.)

From the “Selections.”

=_27._= NATURAL RELIGION.

I know that those who hate and despise the religion of Jesus because it condemns their evil deeds, have endeavored to deprive him of the honor of communicating to mankind the glad tidings of life and immortality.  I know that they have dragged the mouldering carcass of paganism from the grave, animated her lifeless form with a spark stolen from the sacred altar, arrayed her in the spoils of Christianity, re-lighted her extinguished taper at the torch of revelation, dignified her with the name of natural religion, and exalted her in the temple of reason, as a goddess, able, without divine assistance, to guide mankind to truth and happiness.  But we also know, that all her boasted pretensions are vain, the offspring of ignorance, wickedness, and pride.  We know that she is indebted to that revelation which she presumes to ridicule, and contemn, for every semblance of truth or energy which she displays.  We know that the most she can do, is to find men blind and leave them so; and to 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