Mr. Anthony O'Key gave
a short view of the whole controversy. Dr. Foreter, Dr. John Conybeare,
"particularly engaged public attention" as Dr. Tindal's antagonists.
Mr. Simon Brown produced a "solid and excellent" answer; and Dr. Leland,
with many blushes, tells us that he himself issued in Dublin, in 1773,
two volumes, taking a wider compass than the other answers.

"Christianity as Old as the Creation" is a work which Freethinkers may
yet consult with advantage, as a repertory of authorities no longer
accessible to the readers of this generation. What these authorities
allege will be found to have intrinsic value, to be indeed lasting
testimonies in favor of Rationalism. In passing in review the noble
truths, Tindal insists that it is impossible not to wonder at the
policy, or rather want of policy displayed by Christians. Tindal is an
author whom they might be proud of, if they were really in love with
reason. Tindal's opponents have shown how instinctively the children of
faith distrust the truths of Nature. After all the "refutations," and
"confutations" and answers made to the great Deist, Tin-dal's work
has maintained its ground, and the truths he so ably and spiritedly
vindicated, have spread wider since and taken deeper root.

J. W.

DAVID HUME

Lord Brougham has rendered service not only to "Letters," but also to
Freethought, by his admirable "Lives," incomparably the best we have,
of Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Gibbon, etc. From Lord Brougham we learn
(whose life in this sketch we follow) that David Hume, related to the
Earl of Hume's family, was born in Edinburgh, in April, 1711. Refusing
to be made a lawyer, he was sent, in 1734, to a mercantile house in
Bristol. The "desk" not suiting the embryo historian's genius, we find
him in 1737 at La Fleche, in Anjou, writing his still-born "Treatise on
Human Nature;" which in 1742, in separate Essays, attracted some notice.
Keeper and companion to the Marquis of Annandale in 1745, private
secretary to General St. Clair in 1747, he visited on embassy the courts
of Vienna and Turin. While at Turin he completed his "Inquiry Concerning
the Human Understanding," the "Treatise on Human Nature" in a new form.
Returned to Scotland, he published his "Political Discourses" in 1752,
and the same year his "Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals."
The "Essays, Moral and Metaphysical," are the form in which we now read
these speculations. In 1752, Hume became librar