RELIGIONS.

Any fool, who will attack a false religion, by opposing to it another as absurd as itself, will make converts and establish a sect. But he who opposes superstition by the demonstration of its contradictions, will excite universal abhorrence, and will hardly escape stoning.

Lucian, in his life of Alexander, the false prophet, relates that this mountebank prophesied at once against the Christians and against the Epicureans of Pontus, as being in a common hostility against himself and his pretensions. In a similar spirit, certain writers of our own times accuse the reformed religion of atheism, or a tendency towards it. Gifford called every one atheist, in his Quarterly Review, whom he wanted to bring into disrepute. If, therefore, I were to define atheism, I should call it, the state of differing from any received mode of thinking in matters of religion, or in any thing else, where money or money’s worth is concerned. The Epicureans and Christians of Pontus must have been a good deal surprised to find themselves in the same category; and so, too, would many of Mr. Gifford’s atheists.