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world, bring it nearer to those more perfect spirits, who, in the scale of nature, stand nearest to God, and which enlarge not only the desire, but the capacity of enjoying still greater and more refined pleasures. Take away the Deity out of the universe, destroy the intimate relation which subsists bewteen him and his creatures, (as Atheism does) and you deprive man of all the consolation which flow from the contemplation of the boundless goodness, and watchful providence of God; more independent than any other which power wishes, or sensual enjoyments afford; and which can never fail while God exists, and men are fitly disposed to receive them. Suppose that there were no God, where will man find satisfaction? What is there, how ever dreadful and appaling to human nature, that may not happen, and happen the next moment to all of us, on the supposition of an ungoverned world, such as Atheism supposes ours to be? If the more awful occurences of nature, such as earthquakes, inundations, stormy winds, threatening waves, all regulated in their movements, and controlled in their effects by the omnipotent arm and gracious purposes of God, be so tremendous and destructive, what would be the state of man, if left to their unbridled fury ?—May not the heavens be dissolved, the ocean burst her bounds and invade the earth, and the foundations of the earth be overwhelmed ? Nay, nature may be dissolved, and the universe be made a complete desolation. And even though we were to suppose these impossible, where will man turn for true consolation under the calamities of life which are inevitable? It is poor comfort, indeed, to submit to an irreversible fate: or, if the
