a fundamental article of faith.
The providence of the gods, as it related to public communities rather
than to private individuals, was principally displayed on the visible
theatre of the present world. The petitions which were offered on the
altars of Jupiter or Apollo, expressed the anxiety of their worshippers
for temporal happiness, and their ignorance or indifference concerning
a future life. [55] The important truth of the of the immortality of the
soul was inculcated with more diligence, as well as success, in India,
in Assyria, in Egypt, and in Gaul; and since we cannot attribute such
a difference to the superior knowledge of the barbarians, we we must
ascribe it to the influence of an established priesthood, which employed
the motives of virtue as the instrument of ambition. [56]

[Footnote 54: The xith book of the Odyssey gives a very dreary and
incoherent account of the infernal shades. Pindar and Virgil have
embellished the picture; but even those poets, though more correct
than their great model, are guilty of very strange inconsistencies. See
Bayle, Responses aux Questions d'un Provincial, part iii. c. 22.]

[Footnote 55: See xvith epistle of the first book of Horace, the
xiiith Satire of Juvenal, and the iid Satire of Persius: these popular
discourses express the sentiment and language of the multitude.]

[Footnote 56: If we confine ourselves to the Gauls, we may observe,
that they intrusted, not only their lives, but even their money, to
the security of another world. Vetus ille mos Gallorum occurrit (says
Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c. 6, p. 10) quos, memoria proditum est
pecunias montuas, quae his apud inferos redderentur, dare solitos.
The same custom is more darkly insinuated by Mela, l. iii. c. 2. It is
almost needless to add, that the profits of trade hold a just proportion
to the credit of the merchant, and that the Druids derived from their
holy profession a character of responsibility, which could scarcely be
claimed by any other order of men.]

We might naturally expect that a principle so essential to religion,
would have been revealed in the clearest terms to the chosen people of
Palestine, and that it might safely have been intrusted to the
hereditary priesthood of Aaron. It is incumbent on us to adore the
mysterious dispensations of Providence, [57] when we discover that the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul is omitted in the law of Moses
it is darkly insinuated by the prophets; and