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SPECIAL PUBLIC EVILS.

[Part VI.

ual world, and inspiring hopes and fears, and consolations andjoys, which bear no relation to the material and sensible universe.The criminal indulgence of the sensual passions admits but oftwo modes of prevention ; the establishment of such laws andmaxims in society as shall render lewd profligacy impracticable orinfamous, or the infusion of such principles and habits as shallrender it distasteful. Human legislatures have encountered thedisease in the first, the truths and sanctions of revealed religionin the last, of these methods ; to both of which the advocates ofmodern infidelity are equally hostile.

The infidels of late times, therefore, have aimed to destroythe very substance of morals. The disputes on moral questions,hitherto agitated among philosophers, have respected the groundsof duty, not the nature of duty itself; or they have been merely\ metaphysical, and related to the history of moral sentiments inthe mind, the sources and principles from which they were mosteasily deduced ; — they never turned on the quality of those dis-positions and actions, which were to be denominated virtuous.In the firm persuasion that the love and fear of the SupremeBeing, the sacred observance of promises and oaths, reverenceto magistrates, obedience to parents, gratitude to benefactors,conjugal fidelity, and parental tenderness, were primary virtues,and the chief support of every commonwealth, they were unani-mous. * The curse denounced upon such as remove ancientlandmarks, upon those who call good evil, and evil good, putlight for darkness, and darkness for light; who employ their facul-ties to subvert the eternal distinctions of right and wrong, andthus to poison the streams of virtue at their source, falls withaccumulated weight on the advocates of modern infidelity, f

* See above, pp. 6 -11.

t This chapter consists almost entirely of an abridgment of the language anda condensation of the sentiments of the late Rev. Robert Hall’s celebrated “ Ser-mon on Modern Infidelity.” It cannot be unknown to my readers, that withina few years, skepticism, of the grossest kind (Atheism), has raised its offensivehead in Boston, New York, and some other of our large cities. Once let it be-come strong enough, and proof will not be wanting of its destructive tendencyand influence.