actly the talent to reach it. Hume's mind was carried away by his fondness for new theories, his ambition to be found on debatable ground, and the vanity of making good his position by arguments that might perplex, if they did not convince. He describes himself, with evident complacency, as a "friend to doubts, disputes and novelties;" and so lightly did he value truth, whether as a philosopher or a historian, that he could sacrifice it with the coldest indifference, either to vindicate a speculation, or to gratify a prejudice. With such a spirit did Hume prosecute his attacks on Christianity. In a philosophy that sets at defiance the more fixed and acknowledged laws of evidence, and in a history abundant in false colorings and garbled statements, all written in a style of almost Grecian ease and finish, he prevailed with readers who, obdurate in heart, and ambitious to be thought more knowing than other men, loved to wrap themselves up in the mists of barren and uncertain speculations. Rousseau's mind resembled the crater of a burning volcano. Everything that came from his pen seemed fused by a melting heat. He wrote for readers who are governed by impulse, rather than by a taste for

sober reasoning; and by a show of sincerity well adapted to win upon the unwary, and by a vividness of imagery that makes his eloquence dazzling and deceptive, he seldom failed to lead captive those whom he aimed to teach. The scope of Voltaire's mind was more universal. He is not only to be reckoned among the Encyclopedists of his day, but he himself resembled an Encyclopedia of knowledge. He touched upon everything, but instead of adorning, he defaced or perverted much that he touched. There is scarce any region of intellect with which his name is not more or less connected; and, as if glory. ing in the power of his multiform talents, he impiously boasted, that "while it required twelve men to write Christianity up, he would show that one man could write it down." He labored for his object through a long life, and with unabated zeal; and by the keenness of his wit and satire, and his strong picturing of sensuality and the grosser vices, he became the favorite oracle of those who lay less within the reach of his two great cotemporaries and fellow-laborers in the cause of irreligion.

It is frightful even to recollect the havoc and desolation which were wrought by these three

champions of Infidelity and their coadjutors. Their baleful influence was felt from the palace to the cottage. They unhinged the fairest forms of society throughout a whole Continent. They were lepers whose touch was defilement. In the language of the Evangelist, the name of the unclean spirit that possessed them was "Legion." Like the reckless demoniac himself, "no man could bind them, neither could any man tame them." Like him also, their "dwelling was among the tombs;" for wherever they went, it became a field of death around them, a vast Golgotha, where was entombed or scattered abroad every thing most essential to the welfare and happiness of man. But alas, how unlike the poor Gadarene in their end! The word of Divine power commanding the unclean spirit to come out of the man, reached his heart with subduing efficacy; and we see him at once "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind." But they, we must fear, died as they had lived; the demons which possessed them, never exorcised to the last.

After them however arose one who stands unequalled among men in the lasting mischief he has wrought against truth and religion; and I refer to

him more particularly, because of the effort, recently made to keep his chief work before the public eye. The name of Gibbon will at once rise to your minds, as entitled to this guilty pre-eminence. When we think of what he once was, what he became, and what he did, we are reminded of the Star in the Apocalypse "whose name was Wormwood, and which, burning as a lamp, fell from heaven on the rivers and waters, and men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." If we compare him with other infidel writers whom we have named, it would almost seem as if the Powers of darkness had aimed to imitate the Most High in the creation of the world, reserving the choicest specimen of their workmanship for the last. If "there were gi ants in the earth in those days," among the enemies of truth, he was "taller than any of them from the shoulders upwards." He is the Goliath of the Philistine host; and when he comes forth " defying the armies of the living God," "the staff of his spear is like a weaver's beam.”

His feeling of hatred was peculiar. There is no enmity or bitterness like that of an apostate. Nero was cruel and reckless in shedding the blood of

Christians, but he showed nothing like the intensity. of rage "against the Lord and against His Anointed," which was displayed by the apostate Julian, who had once professed Christianity and then renounced it. Gibbon had, in turn, been a member of the Protestant Church of England, of the Roman Catholic Church, of the Protestant Church on the Continent; and in the end became an apostate from religion in all these various forms; carrying with him an enmity of a three-fold strength, as if the venom had been concentrated anew by every fresh renunciation through which he had passed.

Under this stimulus, and with qualifications of mind, study, and travel, richly furnishing him for the accomplishment of his task, he produced the

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," a work which stands among the most splendid achievements of human intellect, and the most dangerous of the attacks ever made upon Divine Revelation. From the nature of the subject, it furnished a high and unequalled advantage to the infidel Historian. There has been but one Rome, and it is scarcely to be expected that another will rise hereafter. The empire not less than the city