Chap. VII] IMMORAL INFLUENCE OF SKEPTICISM.

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ordinary employment of life, but must, from their nature, be re-served for extraordinary occasions ; yet that system is essentiallydefective which leaves no room for their existence. They areimportant, both from their immediate advantage and their remoteinfluence. They sometimes save, and always render illustrious,the age and nation in which they appear. They raise the stand-ard of practical morals ; they arrest the progress of degeneracy ;they diffuse a lustre over the path of life. Monuments of thegreatness of the human mind, they present to the world the au-gust image of virtue in her sublimest form, from which beams oflight and glory issue to remote times and ages ; while their com-memoration by the pen of historians and poets awakens, in dis-tant bosoms, the sparks of kindred excellence.

Combine the frequent and familiar perpetration of atrociousdeeds with the dearth of great and generous actions, and we havethe exact picture of that condition of society which completesthe degradation of the species ; the frightful contrast of dwarfishvirtues and gigantic vices, where every thing good is mean andlittle, and every thing evil is rank and luxuriant. A dull andsickening uniformity prevails, broken only at intervals by volcaniceruptions of anarchy and crime.

II. Hitherto we have considered the influence of skepticismon the principles of virtue, and endeavoured to show, that it de-spoils it of its dignity, and lays its authority in the dust. Itsinfluence on the formation of character comes now to be consid-ered. The actions of men are oftener determined by theircharacter than by their interest ; their conduct takes its colormore from their acquired tastes, inclinations, and habits, thanfrom a deliberate regard to their greatest good. It is only ongreat occasions, that men are accustomed to take an extendedsurvey of their future course, and that they suffer the dictatesof reason to give a new direction to their movements. The ac-tions of each day are, for the most part, links which follow eachother in the chain of habit. Hence, the great effort of practicalwisdom is, to imbue the mind with right tastes, affections, andhabits, — the elements of character and the springs of action.

1. The exclusion of a Supreme Being, and of a superintendingProvidence, tends directly to the destruction of moral taste. Itrobs the universe of all finished and consummate excellence, even