sm or Superstition should be regarded as the
worst enemy to the Commonwealth, for it has no relevancy to our present
inquiry; we are not contending for either, we are objecting to both; and
we are under no necessity of choosing the least of two evils, when we
have the option of "pure and undefined Religion." But we may observe, in
passing, that, historically it has been found possible to keep society
together, and to maintain the authority of law with a greater or less
measure of civil liberty, where Superstition has been generally
prevalent; whereas there is no instance on record of anything
approaching to national Atheism, in which government by law was not
speedily superseded by anarchy and despotism. And the reason of this
difference may be that in every system of Superstition, whether it be a
corruption of Natural or of Revealed Religion, "some faint embers of
sacred truth remain unextinguished," some convictions which still
connect man with the spiritual and the eternal, and which are
sufficient, if not to enlighten and pacify the conscience, yet to keep
alive a sense of responsibility and a fear of retribution; "certain
sparks," as Hooker calls them, "of the light of truth intermingled with
the darkness of error," which may have served a good purpose in
maintaining civil virtue and social order, although these would have
been far better secured by the prevalence of a purer faith.

There are some circumstances, of a novel and unprecedented nature, which
impart a solemn interest to our present inquiry. At the beginning of the
present century, Robert Hall, referring to the unbelief which preceded
and accompanied the first outburst of the Revolution in France,
mentioned _three_ circumstances which appeared to him to be "equally new
and alarming." He regarded it as the first attempt which had ever been
witnessed on an extensive scale to establish the principles of Atheism,
as the first attempt to popularize these principles by means of a
literature addressed and adapted to the common people, and as the first
systematic attempt to undermine the foundations, and to innovate on the
very substance of Morals.[24] But if we compare the first with the new
Encyclopedie,--the former concocted by Voltaire, D'Alembert and Diderot,
the latter by Pierre Leroux and his associates,--we shall find that
Infidelity has assumed greater hardihood, and has appeared under less
restraint in recent than in former times; while the speculations