d
vain fears by which the great majority of the human race, in every age
and country, have been enslaved, as he who will take the pains to peruse
Dr. Dick's admirable treatise on the improvement of society by the
diffusion of knowledge can not fail to be convinced. That such absurd
notions should ever have prevailed is a most grating and humiliating
thought, when we consider the noble faculties with which man is endowed.
That they still prevail to a great extent, even in our own country, is a
striking proof that as yet we are, as a people, but just emerging from
the gloom of intellectual darkness. The prevalence of such opinions is
to be regretted, not only on account of the groundless alarms they
create, but chiefly on account of the false ideas they inspire with
regard to the nature of the Supreme Ruler of the universe, and of his
arrangements in the government of the world. He whose mind is
enlightened with true science perceives throughout all nature the most
striking evidences of benevolent design, and rejoices in the benignity
of the Great Parent of the universe, discovering nothing in the
arrangements of the Creator, in any department of his works, which has a
direct tendency to produce pain to any intelligent or sensitive being.
The superstitious man, on the contrary, contemplates the sky, the air,
the waters, and the earth as filled with malicious beings, ever ready to
haunt him with terror or to plot his destruction. The former
contemplates the Deity directing the movements of the material world by
fixed and invariable laws, which none but himself can counteract or
suspend. The latter views these movements as continually liable to be
controlled by capricious and malignant beings to gratify the most
trivial passions. How very different, of course, must be their
conceptions and feelings respecting the attributes and government of the
Supreme Being! While the one views him as the infinitely wise and
benevolent Father, whose paternal care and goodness inspire confidence
and affection, the other must regard him, in a certain degree, as a
capricious being, and offer up his adorations under the influence of
fear.

These and like notions have also an evident tendency to habituate the
mind to false principles and processes of reasoning which unfit it for
legitimate conclusions in its researches after truth. They manifestly
chain down the understanding, and unfit it for the appreciation of those
noble and enlarged view