will answer you, that he believes his own eyesight more than your learning; and his eyesight tells him the sun moves round the earth. And as for the earth's turning round upon her axis, he will say, that he has often hung a kettle over the kitchen fire at night, and when he came back in the morning, it was hanging there still; but, had the earth turned round, the kettle would have been turned over, and the mash spilled over the floor.' You are amused with the peasant's simplicity, but you cannot convince him. His objection is, in his own eyes, insurmountable: he will tell the affair to his neighbours as a good story; and they will agree that he fairly shut the philosopher's mouth. You may reply, that the peasant was introduced into the middle of a matured science, and that, not having learned its elements, he was unsupplied with the principles of correct judgment.' True; but your solution has overthrown yourself. A freethinker, when he hears some great doctrine of Christianity, lets off a small objection, and runs away laughing at the folly, or railing at the imposture, of all who venture to defend a divine revelation; he gathers his brother unbelievers, and they unite with him in wondering at the

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He

weakness or the impudence of Christians. He is in the very situation of the peasant. bolts into the heart of a grand religious system; he has never adverted to its first principles, and then he complains that the evidence is bad. But the fault in neither case lies in the evidence; it lies in the ignorance or obstinacy of the objector. The peasant's ground is as firm as the infidel's. The proof of the Newtonian system is to the former as distant, subtle, and cloudy, as the proof of revelation can be to the latter; and the objection of the one, as good as the objection of the other. If the depravity of men had as much interest in persuading them that the earth is not globular, and does not move round the sun, as it has in persuading them that the Bible is not true, a mathematical demonstration would fail of converting them, although the demonstrator were an angel of God.

"But with respect to the other point, namely, that there are objections to mathematical evidence more puzzling and unanswerable than can be alleged against moral reasoning; take the two following instances:

"It is mathematically demonstrated that matter is infinitely divisible; that is, has an

infinite number of parts: a line, then, of half an inch long, has an infinite number of parts. Who does not see the absurdity of an infinite half inch? Try the difficulty another way. It requires some portion of time to pass any portion of space. Then as your half inch has an infinite number of parts, it requires an infinite number of portions of time for a moving point to pass by the infinite number of parts; but an infinite number of portions of time is an eternity! Consequently, it requires an eternity, or something like it, to move half an inch."

"But, Sir," interposed the officer, "you do not deny the accuracy of the demonstration, that matter is infinitely divisible." "Not in the least, Sir; I perceive no flaw in the chain of demonstration, and yet I perceive the result to be infinitely absurd.

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Again: it is mathematically demonstrated that a straight line, called the asymptote of the hyperbola, may eternally approach the curve of the hyperbola, and yet can never meet it. Now, as all demonstrations are built upon axioms, an axiom must always be plainer than a demonstration; and, to my judgment, it is as plain, that, if two lines continually

approach, they shall meet, as that the whole is greater than its part. Here, therefore, I am fixed. I have a demonstration directly in the teeth of an axiom, and am equally incapable of denying either side of the contradiction."

"Sir," exclaimed the officer, clapping his hands together, "I own I am beaten, completely beaten; I have nothing more to say."

A silence of some minutes succeeded; when the young military traveller said to his theological friend, "I have studied all religions, and have not been able to satisfy myself."

"No, Sir," answered he, "there is one religion which you have not yet studied."

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Pray, Sir," cried the officer, roused and eager, "what is that?"

"The religion," replied the other, “of salvation through the redemption of the Son of God: the religion which will sweeten your pleasures, and soften your sorrows; which will give peace to your conscience, and joy to your heart; which will bear you up under the pressure of evils here, and shed the light of immortality on the gloom of the grave. This religion, I believe, Sir, you have yet to study."

288 CONVERSATION WITH A YOUNG TRAVELLER.

The officer put his hands upon his face; then languidly clasping them, let them fall down, forced a smile, and said, with a sigh, “We must all follow what we think best." His behaviour afterwards was perfectly decorous. Nothing further is known of him; except that before he left the United States he is said to have turned his serious attention to the subject of Christianity, and expressed his full conviction of its truth and divine authority.

THE END.

LONDON:-Printed by James Nichols, 46, Hoxton-Square.