day glory, would first shed its light on the souls of men in America.

Now, such was the condition of the American church, when that wave of population, which had risen on the sea-shore, and rolled abroad over the Atlantic regions, began to ripple over the comb of the Alleghany, and rush down and spread itself over the fertile plains of the west. Many of the first emigrants from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas, carried their religion with them. And it seems that, at that early period, religion could better "bear transportation," than at a later day.

War has almost invariably a demoralizing tendency.; and the war of our revolution, however necessary and important in its connection, was not exempt from this unhappy concomitant. But, perhaps, in no other part of our country were the sad results of war realized, at that time, to the same extent as in the new settlements of the west. There the supply of Bibles and pastors was limited. Religious privileges were few. And many of the population were as sheep having no shepherd. There was less, therefore, to counteract the evils incident to war than in other sections of our land.

Above all this, it must be observed, that when peace was concluded with Great Britain in the year 1783, and other citizens could return to the pursuits of peaceful life, and the enjoyment of gospel ordinances, the frontier population of the west were embroiled with hostile Indians for the space of half a generation. During this period of fierce conflict between the white and the red man, those Indian tribes that hung around our western border produced not a few "men of renown."

Headed by some of these daring chiefs, a strong band of Indians would make a sudden incursion into the white settlements, and murder, burn, rob, and perpetrate cruelty in the most frightful and barbarous forms. The scalping-knife was red with the blood of the mother, the tomahawk was buried in the brain of the helpless child! Until, terrified with the apprehension of the vengeance they had provoked, the Indians would fly with the utmost precipitation. Then, for ten or fifteen miles around, the white population was aroused, and the Indians were pursued not only with retaliating, but with exterminating vengeance. Who will wonder, that, when seventeen years of such life as this came right in after the seven years of the revolutionary war, the Sabbath and sacred things were in a great measure forgotten or trodden down? A generation sprang up, in which dexterity and prowess in Indian warfare were the great objects of ambition, and, indeed, the high road to fame. And in the mean while, the light of religion, carried to the west at the time of its first settlement, surrounded long by adverse influences, shone but faintly, while iniquity abounded and waxed bold.

It is necessary here to pause and notice the state of things in Europe at this period. Our country, when young, was far more influenced by Europe than she is now. The year 1728 is memorable as the great era of infidelity in Europe. Voltaire formed, about this period, his great plan for destroying the Christian religion. I quote the language of Dr. Dwight, of Yale College. This eminent writer observes that Voltaire, for the purpose of blotting out Christianity, "engaged, at several succeeding periods, a number of men, distinguished for power, talents, reputation, and influence --

all deadly enemies to the gospel, atheists, men of profligate principles and profligate lives. This design he pursued with unabated zeal fifty years; and was seconded by his associates with an ardor and industry scarcely inferior to his own. In consequence of their united labors, and of the labors of others, from time to time combined with them, they ultimately spread the design throughout a great part of Europe; and embarked in it individuals, at little distances, over almost the whole of that continent. Their adherents inserted themselves into every place, office, and employment, in which their agency might become efficacious, and which furnished an opportunity of spreading their corruptions. They were found in every literary institution, from the abecedarian school to the academy of sciences; and in every civil office, from that of the bailiff to that of the monarch. They swarmed in the Wherever mischief

palace; they haunted the church. could be done, they were found; and wherever they were found, mischief was extensively done. Of books they controlled the publication, the sale, and the character. An immense number they formed; an immense number they forged; prefixed to them the names of reputable writers, and sent them into the world, to be sold for a song; and when that could not be done, to be given away. Within a period shorter than could have been imagined, they possessed themselves, to a great extent, of a control, nearly absolute, of the literary, religious, and political state of Europe.

"With these advantages in their hands, it will easily be believed, that they left no instrument unemployed, and no measure untried, to accomplish their own malignant purposes.

With a diligence, courage, constancy,

activity, and perseverance, which might rival the efforts of demons themselves, they penetrated into every corner of human society. Scarcely a man, woman, or child was left unassailed, wherever there was a single hope that the attack might be successful. Books were written and published, in innumerable multitudes, in which infidelity was brought down to the level of peasants, and even of children, and poured with immense assiduity into the cottage and the school. Others, of a superior kind, crept into the shop and the farm-house; and others, of a still higher class, found their way to the drawing-room, the university, and the palace. The business of all men who were of any importance, and the education of the children of all such men, were, as far as possible, engrossed, or at least influenced, by these banditti of the moral world; and the hearts of those who had no importance but in their numbers and physical strength. A sensual, profligate nobility, and princes, if possible, still more sensual and profligate, easily yielded themselves and their children into the hands of these minions of corruption. Too ignorant, too enervated, or too indolent, to understand, or even to inquire that they might understand, the tendency of all these efforts, they marched quietly on to the gulf of ruin, which was already open to receive them. With these was combined a priesthood, which, in all its dignified ranks, was still more putrid; and which eagerly yielded up the surplice and the lawn, the desk and the altar, to destroy that Bible which they had vowed to defend as well as to preach, and to renew the crucifixion of that Redeemer whom they had sworn to worship. By these agents, and these efforts, the plague was spread with rapidity, and to an

extent which astonished heaven and earth; and life went out, not in solitary cases, but by a universal extinction.

"While these measures were thus going on, with a success scarcely interrupted, Dr. Adam Weishaupt, professor of the canon law in the university of Ingoldstadt, a city of Bavaria, a man of no contemptible talents, but of immense turpitude, and a Jesuit, established the society of Illuminees. Into this establishment he brought all the systematized iniquity of his brotherhood distinguished beyond every other class of men for cunning, mischief, an absolute destitution of conscience, an absolute disregard of all the interests of man, and a torpid insensibility to moral obligation. No fraternity, for so long a time, or to so great an extent, united within its pale such a mass of talents, or employed in its service such a succession of vigorous efforts. The serpentine system of this order Weishaupt perfectly understood. The great design of the Jesuits had always been to engross the power and influence of Europe, and to regulate all its important affairs. The system of measures which they had adopted for this end, was superior to every preceding scheme of human policy. To this design Weishaupt, who was more absolutely an atheist than Voltaire, and as cordially wished for the ruin of Christianity, superadded a general intention of destroying the moral character of man. The system of policy adopted by the Jesuits was, therefore, exactly fitted to his purpose; for the design, with this superaddition, was exactly the same.

"With these advantageous preparations, he boldly undertook this work of destruction, and laid the axe at the root of all moral principle, and the sense of all