iv PREFACE AND INSCRIPTION. as to take delight in the softest adulation, and the grossest flattery. The The priesthood of this baneful Religion are, for the most part, the relent- How different the Religion, the God, and the Priesthood in question are But why lengthen this preface into an essay. It needs only to add that PREFACE AND INSCRIPTION. V the author of these desultory papers believes that Christianity contains the only system of ethics from which the human race has anything to hope, and that in proportion as its benign influences take possession of the human heart, crime will disappear from the face of the earth, and Bigotry and Superstition—those twin Goddesses of crime-will fold their black wings in the embrace of death. It may be too much to hope, that the following "articles"-(composed, as they were, amid the conflicting labors and wearing responsibilities of more than one employment)—will do anything to shake the faith of the people in their unrighteous God, nevertheless the writer entertains and indulges that hope, and was strengthened by it in preparing them for the public eye. If the writer has been fortunate enough to escape to any extent from the meshes of politics and sect, and to adopt a philosophy unlimited by sectional lines and unwarped by sectarian prejudices: if he has learned to consider the claims of Humanity as paramount to all others, and to repudiate and trample under foot whatever conflicts with those claims, however hallowed by age or consecrated by association: if he has been enabled to see with tolerable clearness the intrinsic evils of all political or religious corporation, and to protest with any power against cumbering the reforms of the day with a particle of its destructive machinery: if he has come to appreciate the sublime character and inconceivable power of unrestricted and unorganized speech as a reform instrumentality: if, in one word, his eyes have been opened to the infinite beauty and entire practicability of the distinctive principles of the New Testament: - he is mainly indebted for such wisdom to the brilliant pen, and heroic life of NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS, to whom, therefore, this little book is affectionately inscribed, as the most significant token the author can offer of his profound admiration and esteem. H. C. JR. LYNN, Jan'y 1st, 1846. |