lted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase in
gratitude as it increased in knowledge: his religion or his worship
would become united with his improvement as a man: any employment he
followed that had connection with the principles of the creation,--as
everything of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts,
has,--would teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to
him, than any theological Christian sermon he now hears. Great objects
inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but
the grovelling tales and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are
fit only to excite contempt.

Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene I
have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has knowledge of the
principles upon which the creation is constructed. We know that the
greatest works can be represented in model, and that the universe can be
represented by the same means. The same principles by which we measure
an inch or an acre of ground will measure to millions in extent. A
circle of an inch diameter has the same geometrical properties as a
circle that would circumscribe the universe. The same properties of a
triangle that will demonstrate upon paper the course of a ship, will
do it on the ocean; and, when applied to what are called the heavenly
bodies, will ascertain to a minute the time of an eclipse, though those
bodies are millions of miles distant from us. This knowledge is of
divine origin; and it is from the Bible of the creation that man has
learned it, and not from the stupid Bible of the church, that teaches
man nothing. [The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first
chapter of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this they
have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to have
been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there
was any sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the
cause of day and night--and what is called his rising and setting that
of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to
suppose the Almighty to say, "Let there be light." It is the imperative
manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and
balls, Presto, be gone--and most probably has been taken from it,
as Moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls this
expression the sublime; and by the same rule the conjurer is sublime