spirits with all their demands, like so
many children away out in the darkness without hope, uneasy, restless,
always dissatisfied, and ever trying to get into the possession of the
knowledge of the unseen and future, without one ray of mental light
shining out from the heavens upon our relations to perfect our condition
and declare the glorious goodness of an all-wise Creator? Volney says,
"Provident nature having endowed the heart of man with inexhaustible
hope, he set about finding happiness in this world, and failing in his
efforts, he set out in his imagination and created a world for himself,
where, free from tyrants, he could have all his wrongs redressed and
enjoy unsullied bliss." This is Volney's account of the origin of
religion, the tap-root of the tree. It contains a most wonderful
concession, one that Tyndal made when he said, "There is a place in
man's psychological nature for religion." Is there a place in man's
physical nature for bread and meat, for food of every variety that man's
soul desires? Do we attribute all the mercies of physical life to a
supreme intelligence? Has that intelligence created us and left us
endowed with "Inexhaustible hope," to be disappointed forever, and the
only result, the "imaginary" creation of the Christian's happy heaven.
But Volney makes another grand concession in the quotation which I have
given, and that is the nature of the Christian's future world in its
relations to wrongs as well as tyrants, neither are to exist there. That
the Christian's religion, with its beautiful world, does fill up the
soul's demands is a fact unintentionally conceded by Volney, and known
throughout the land in the contentment and bliss and heroism of the
dying Christian. In this hope alone man's spiritual wants are met. This,
with all that pertains to it, is in the revelation that God has made to
our race. How could this be made? I answer, it was made by the spirit of
God. "Holy men of old spake as they were moved upon by the Holy Spirit."
This is what we call _inspiration_. This word is a translation of
"_Theopneustos_," which is from "Theos," _God_, "pneuma," _spirit_,
_Spirit of God_. Is it reasonable to allow that this revelation could be
given by the spirit of God through holy men? I will let an infidel
answer this question. Bolingbroke said, "It is just as easy to
comprehend the operation of the spirit of God upon the mind of a prophet
in order to give his will to us as it is to compre