atue, decay as quickly
as if they had not been sanctified; and I think I could show that their
influence is owing to the imagination, which, when infinite time is
considered, or the course of ages even, is null and its effect
imperceptible; and similar results occur, whether the faith be that of
Osiris, of Jupiter, of Jehovah, or of Jesus."

To this Ambrosio replied, his countenance and the tones of his voice
expressing some emotion: "I do not think, Onuphrio, that you consider
this question with your usual sagacity or acuteness; indeed, I never hear
you on the subject of religion without pain and without a feeling of
regret that you have not applied your powerful understanding to a more
minute and correct examination of the evidences of revealed religion. You
would then, I think, have seen, in the origin, progress, elevation,
decline and fall of the empires of antiquity, proofs that they were
intended for a definite end in the scheme of human redemption; you would
have found prophecies which have been amply verified; and the foundation
or the ruin of a kingdom, which appears in civil history so great an
event, in the history of man, in his religious institutions, as
comparatively of small moment; you would have found the establishment of
the worship of one God amongst a despised and contemned people as the
most important circumstance in the history of the early world; you would
have found the Christian dispensation naturally arising out of the
Jewish, and the doctrines of the pagan nations all preparatory to the
triumph and final establishment of a creed fitted for the most
enlightened state of the human mind and equally adapted to every climate
and every people."

To this animated appeal of Ambrosio, Onuphrio replied in the most
tranquil manner and with the air of an unmoved philosopher:--"You mistake
me, Ambrosio, if you consider me as hostile to Christianity. I am not of
the school of the French Encyclopaedists, or of the English infidels. I
consider religion as essential to man, and belonging to the human mind in
the same manner as instincts belong to the brute creation, a light, if
you please of revelation to guide him through the darkness of this life,
and to keep alive his undying hope of immortality: but pardon me if I
consider this instinct as equally useful in all its different forms, and
still a divine light through whatever medium or cloud of human passion or
prejudice it passes. I reverence it in the