While many things about it are
disputed or are dark, they still plainly see its foundation, and its
main pillars; and they behold in it a sacred structure, rising up to the
heavens. They wish its general principles, and all its great truths, to
be spread over the whole earth. But those who do not value Christianity,
nor believe in its importance to society or individuals, cavil about
sects and schisms, and ring monotonous changes upon the shallow and so
often refuted objections founded on alleged variety of discordant creeds
and clashing doctrines. I shall close this part of my argument by
reading extracts from an English writer, one of the most profound
thinkers of the age, a friend of reformation in the government and laws,
John Foster, the friend and associate of Robert Hall. Looking forward to
the abolition of the present dynasties of the Old World, and desirous to
see how the order and welfare of society is to be preserved in the
absence of present conservative principles, he says:--
"Undoubtedly the zealous friends of popular education account
knowledge valuable absolutely, as being the apprehension of things
as they are; a prevention of delusions; and so far a fitness for
right volitions. But they consider religion (besides being itself
the primary and infinitely the most important part of knowledge) as
a principle indispensable for securing the full benefit of all the
rest. It is desired, and endeavored, that the understandings of
these opening minds may be taken possession of by just and solemn
ideas of their relation to the Eternal Almighty Being; that they
may be taught to apprehend it as an awful reality, that they are
perpetually under his inspection; and, as a certainty, that they
must at length appear before him in judgment, and find in another
life the consequences of what they are in spirit and conduct here.
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