EXTRACT FROM A SERMON,

ON THE PERILS OF ATHEISM.

BY LYMAN BEECHER, D. D.

1. THE extent of our country renders the efficient supervision of our laws impossible, without a vigorous and allpervading tone of intelligence and moral principle. Our interests are, in fact, one; but our vision is limited, and our information imperfect, and our selfishness and pride, and passion are great, and impatient of self-denial, and contradiction; and misinformation, and jealousy, and local prejudice are of spontaneous growth, and, with the sinister culture of reckless ambition, of rampant vegetation.

When, therefore, we consider the vigor of our national intellect-the freedom of our habits-the self-will and self. sufficiency of our republican character-our boundless enterprise, our corrupting abundance, and voluptuous dissipation, and fractious impatience of rebuke or control-is this a nation, so fearfully and wonderfully made, and so eminently fitted for self-destruction, to say unto God, "depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways?" and to Christ, "let us alone, thou Jesus of Nazareth, for what have we to do with thee?"

Our danger is greatly augmented if we consider, moreover, that beside the collisions of individuals, with law and order, some of our most perilous movements are the conflicts of independent states-of mighty nations, condensed for particular purposes into one nation, by the individual suffrage of the entire people; and that often one half the nation is roused

in furious political strife, to counteract the desires of the * other half.

Now, what motives of human origin and application can extend their all-pervading and efficient control over such a mass of mind, so diversified by circumstances, and so delicately, and complexly, and slenderly allied, and so infuriated often by passion, pride, and discontent?

Who but God can speak efficaciously to the waves of such an unquiet sea? What but the omnipotent attractions of his glory, and the sanctions of his eternal government, and the tranquillizing influence of his gospel upon renovated mind, can bring and hold such discordant and powerful materials in prosperous social alliance? These atheists might as well form a project to annihilate the sun, and hold the material universe together by cobwebs instead of his attractions, as to withdraw from masses of depraved mind the moral influence of his government and the institutions of christianity.

It was with the utmost difficulty that our union was formed. Nothing but an urgent necessity, and wisdom, and prudence, and patience, and condescension, and confidence in God, and his protection and blessing, saved us. When our numbers were small, our extent limited, our capital, and credit, and enterprise in embryo; and at an age of relative purity of morals, and before the agitations of party spirit assumed their fiery aspect, and terrific power, the patriots whom nature and the revolution had made great, and invested with unlimited influence, found it extremely difficult to achieve the compromise that made us one. when it was done, it was with trembling that the patriot navigators, with Washington at the helm, launched forth upon the untried deep; and though, as yet, we have not foundered, not one of the patriot band have died in full and/ certain hope. Nor is the danger past. Dark clouds environ our horizon now, and rocks and quicksands are about our way. Our ablest captains, who in ordinary times conceal

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their fears, open their eyes and tell us that there are breakers, and a stiff wind, and a lee shore, and that they cannot be answerable for the safety of the ship. That she will weather the storm they hope, but fear that in evil hour she may strike or founder. The concussions of party spirit now, are not the healthful conflicts of jealous liberty, but the paroxysms of envy, and desperate ambition, and deadly hate-not the breath of zephyrs, and the gentle undulations of the lake, to prevent stagnation; but the perilous commotion of powerful elements. What, then, in such a crisis, might not be anticipated, should a band of these political experimenters get on board, and gain the helm, on purpose to wreck the ship, to re-construct from its fragments another of better model, and to be navigated under better auspices,-to throw overboard compass, quadrant, and chart, and put out the sun to steer by conjecture and the stars? What if they are chimerical, and honest? How many misguided men aboard does it require to wreck a ship in a storm?

The unexampled power and prosperity of our nation, does but amplify, and hasten, and render more inevitable the causes of our ruin, without the correspending moral influence of the government of God.

Steam has, indeed, annihilated time and distance, and canals and rail roads have exalted the valleys, and brought down the mountains; and mechanism, by its abbreviations of labor, is relaxing the curse on beast and man, and multiplying a hundred fold the products of human labor.

But if other republics, on their little territories, and in their dilatory course, accumulated the means of effeminacy) and ruin in a few generations, how swiftly must our sun roll up to its meridian, to set among the clouds generated by the decomposition of our rank abundance !

Nor let us confide presumptuously in the sufficiency of a national education. For though ignorance may destroy us, knowledge alone cannot save. Knowledge is, indeed, power; but it is power to kill as well as to make alive, as it is

wielded by the madness of the heart, or by moral principle. The men who terrified the world by their crimes, did not lack mental culture.

It is the heart which governs the intellect, and not the intellect which governs the heart; and it is by the education of the national heart, in the first principles of the government of God, and the guidance of the national will, by the hopes and fears of eternity, added to the sanctions of time, that we can undergird the ship, and secure to her a safe passage and quiet moorings.

2. The very greatness of our liberty is its most terrific attribute, in the presence of organized licentiousness and demoralization.

In a despotic government, force may protect us, where public sentiment is too corrupt to secure the execution of the laws. But in a republic it is not so. There, when public sentiment falters, the laws have no power; and then, first

anarchy, and next despotism ensues. The genius of our. government, and the competitions of party have introduced. universal suffrage. The door is wide open to all who are born, and to all who immigrate, and cannot be shut. Wel must live by universal suffrage or perish. If we can imbue with knowledge and virtue the mass, we shall live; but if irreligion and profligacy predominate, sure as the march of time, we fail. Such mobs among us, as in England they play with as the lion would play with the kid, would destroy us. Force enough to quell them, would, in the hand of an ambitious demagogue, be force enough to enslave us. Ours must be a self-government or despotism. Such a nation as this must be greatly free, or crushed by the most rigorous despotism that ever extorted groans from suffering humanity. I Do any exult in our safety, and bid defiance to disaster, because we are now so free and so powerful?—The inconstant ocean might as well exult in her momentary tranquillity, because her waves are above control; when it is the very

circumstance of their freedom and indomitable power which gives to the atmosphere such power upon the fluid mass.

Twice, in France, the physical power has gained the ascendency over law; and by the last victory, the discovery has been made, that to patriots, cities are fortresses, and pavements munitions. This is one of the most glorious and dreadful discoveries of modern days-glorious in its ultimate results, in the emancipation of the world, but dreadful in those intervening revolutions which power may achieve in the conquest of liberty, without corresponding intelligence and virtue for its permanent preservation.

The conquest of liberty is not difficult-the question is, where to put it-with whom to entrust it. If to the multitude who achieved it, it be committed, it will perish by anarchy. If national guards are employed for its defence, the bayonets which protect it are at any moment able to destroy it for a military despotism. If to a republican king it be entrusted, it will have to be regulated by state policy, and fed on bread and water, until the action of her heart, and the movement of her tongue, and the power of her arm, as under the deadly incubus, shall cease. THERE IS NOT IN THIS WIDE WORLD A SAFE DEPOSIT FOR LIBERTY, BUT THE HEARTS OF PATRIOTS, SO ENLIGHTENED, AS TO BE ABLE TO JUDGE OF CORRECT LEGISLATION, AND SO PATIENT AND DISINTERESTED, AS TO PRACTICE SELF-DENIAL, AND SELF-GOVERNIMENT, FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD.

But can such a state of society be found and maintained without the bible, and the institutions of christianity? Did a condition of unperverted liberty, uninspired by christianity, ever bless the world through any considerable period of duration? The power of a favoring clime, and the force of genius, did thrust up from the dead level of monotonous despotism, the republics of Greece to a temporary liberty; but it was a patent model only, compared with such a nation as this; and it was partial, and capricious, and of short duration, and rendered illustrious rather by the darkness which