ch they tax the
Christian; for they are full of interminable disputes about the
'truths' or 'sentiments' of their theology."

One of those who had gone further than our Deists felt disposed to
question all "immutable morality" original "dictates of conscience."
"I doubt," said he, "whether those dictates are any clearer than
those dogmas of 'natural religion' which have been so oppugned; and
I judge so for the same reason,--the endless disputes of men with
regard to the source, the rule, the obligation of what they call
duty; which are exactly similar to the disputes which we charge upon
the Natural Religionist and the Christian." And here he ran through
half a dozen of the two score theories which the history of ethics
presents, rare work with Plato and Aristotle, Hobbes, Cudworth,
Mandeville, and Bentham. "Meantime," he concluded, "we do see, in
point of fact, that the moral rule is most flexible, and to an
indeterminate degree the creature of association, custom, and
education, so that I am inclined to think that that alone is
obligatory which the positive laws and institutions of any society
render binding." "So that" cried Harrington, "a man both may and
ought to thieve in ancient Sparta, may expose his parents in
Hindostan, and commit infanticide in China!" "It is a pity," archly
whispered the Italian guest, "that this gentleman was not born
in China."

"It is a respectable, but very old speculation," said Harrington,
"of which many ancient moralists avowed themselves the advocates,
but of which it is only fair to admit that Plato and many other
heathens were heartily ashamed."

It seemed as if the bathos of theological and ethical absurdity could
not lie deeper; but I was mistaken. The admirer of Mr. Atkinson
declared with great modesty that he thought, as did his favorite
author, that the whole world had been mad on the subject of theology
and morality;--that the prime error consisted in the superficial
notion of a Personal Deity, and the foolish attribution of the notion
of "sin" and "crime" to human motives and conduct, instead of regarding
the former as a name of an absolutely unknown cause of the entire
phenomena of the universe, and the latter as part of a series of
rigidly necessary antecedents and consequents, for which man is no
more to be either blamed or praised than the sun for shining or the
avalanche for falling; he added, that only in this way could
man attain peace. "As Mr. Atkinson beautiful