s, he retired to
Scotland, to take his chance of employment in its colleges. In 1748 he
settled in Edinburgh, and, for three years, read a course of lectures on
rhetoric. His contemporaries, then obscure, became, in some instances,
conspicuous; for among them were Hume, Robertson, and Wedderburne. In
1751, Smith was elected to the professorship of Logic in the University
of Glasgow, which he soon after exchanged for that of Moral Philosophy.

Thus far we run on smoothly with Lord Brougham; but when he comes to
discuss religion, we must occasionally doubt his guidance. For example,
in speaking of Smith's lectures on Natural Theology, he denounces the
jealousy of those who regard it as other than "the very foundation
essential to support its fabric." From this opinion we totally dissent.
It is perfectly true that natural religion and revelation are consistent
with each other, as must be presumed from their being the work of the
same Divine wisdom. But their foundations are wholly distinct. Why did
the Jew believe the Mosaic revelation? Simply and solely, because it was
delivered to him with such evidences of supernatural origin, in the
thunders of Sinai, and substantiated at subsequent periods by miracle
and prophecy, that he must receive it as divine. Why did the early
converts receive Christianity? Simply on the same direct evidence
supplied to their senses. No apostle sent them to examine their notions
of the Godhead, or left them to inculcate the doctrines of the gospel by
their reason. But he declared his doctrine as a new truth, and gave
proof of its truth being divine, by working wonders palpably beyond the
power of man. Of course, unless man knew what was meant by the power of
the Deity, he could not have comprehended the simplest communication of
the apostle. But we are speaking of the foundation of a belief--not the
intelligibility of a language. We are entitled to go further still, and
say, that the first idea of the being of a God was itself a
revelation--a much plainer solution of the extraordinary circumstance,
that so lofty and recondite a conception should have existed in the
earliest and rudest ages of society; than to suppose that the
antediluvian shepherd, or the postdiluvian hunter, should have ever
thought of tracing effects and causes up to that extreme elevation,
where a pure and supreme Spirit creates and governs the whole. We are
entitled even to doubt whether the idea of Spirit was ever _naturally