at present of their general inattention to
things of a religious nature, let us ask, wherein can we discern the
points of discrimination between them and professed unbelievers? In an
age wherein it is confessed and lamented that infidelity abounds, do we
observe in them any remarkable care to instruct their children in the
principles of the faith which they profess, and to furnish them with
arguments for the defence of it? They would blush, on their child's
coming out into the world, to think him defective in any branch of that
knowledge, or of those accomplishments which belong to his station in
life, and accordingly these are cultivated with becoming assiduity. But
he is left to collect his religion as he may; the study of Christianity
has formed no part of his education, and his attachment to it (where any
attachment to it exists at all) is, too often, not the preference of
sober reason, but merely the result of early prejudice and groundless
prepossession. He was born in a Christian country, of course he is a
Christian; his father was a member of the church of England, so is he.
When such is the hereditary religion handed down from generation to
generation, it cannot surprise us to observe young men of sense and
spirit beginning to doubt altogether of the truth of the system in which
they have been brought up, and ready to abandon a station which they are
unable to defend. Knowing Christianity chiefly in the difficulties which
it contains, and in the impossibilities which are falsely imputed to it,
they fall perhaps into the company of infidels; and, as might be
expected, they are shaken by frivolous objections and profane cavils,
which, had they been grounded and bottomed in reason and argument, would
have passed by them, "as the idle wind," and scarcely have seemed worthy
of serious notice.

Let us beware before it be too late. No one can say into what discredit
Christianity may hereby grow, at a time when the free and unrestrained
intercourse, subsisting amongst the several ranks and classes of
society, so much favours the general diffusion of the sentiments of the
higher orders. To a similar ignorance is perhaps in no small degree to
be ascribed the success, with which Christianity has been attacked of
late years in a neighbouring country. Had she not been wholly unarmed
for the contest, however she might have been forced from her untenable
posts, and compelled to disembarrass herself from her load of
incumbran