CONFERENCE I. 403 and go down to their graves without any sensible and remark- able distinction in favour of the men of virtue ; I tell you, friend, the bulk of the wild American world will havemuch ado to think that a wise God governs the world, or even so much as regards or knows the actions of his creatures. They will be ready to take up with those atheistical sentiments represented in scrip- ture. " How doth God know ? Can he judge through the dark cloud ? Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not. That which befalleth beasts, befallethalso the sons of men, they have all onebreath ; as the one dieth, so dieth the other ; so that a man has no pre-eminence above a beast, all go unto one place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again : What profit is it that we should serve God, or pray unto him? we de- -sire not the knowledge of his ways." If it cost Solomon, the wisest of men, some labour of thought and enquiry, and cost David his father, before him, such a painful inward conflict to solve these difficulties, as appears in Ps. lxxiii. and Eccles. iii. 16'. how much need may we suppose the tribes of the heathen ji world have of some brighter teacher than their own rude facul- ties to find out and determine, that this world, and the inhabi- tants of it, are at all governedby an all-wise and almightyBeing. Loe. I confess, Philander, some of these are difficulties of which I was not so well apprized before-hand, and I am con- vinced it is not so easy for a wild heathen to find out some of these necessary truths as I imagined. But however, let us go on. What is the next article of natural religion that you sup- pose would hardly come within the reach of the reasoningof a wild American ? PITH. Why truly, Logisto, I think the worship of an invi- sible God, with prayer, or praise, or thanksgiving, is not so Very obvious a duty to those rude and ignorant creatures, nor does it appear to them so necessary as we who dwellin Europe are ready to fancy. Pray let us hear then, how their own uninstructed reason would lead them to thisgeneral and necessary duty of the wor- ship of the invisible Being who made them, or any particular instances of it Lou. One would think this is a very easy matter for the meanest principle of reason, and the lowest capacity to find otít: For if they once come so far as to acknowledge that the world was made by a Being of great wisdom and power, surely they may readily infer, that they should admire and reverence this wisdom and power thatmide them, and all things around them : They may speedily anti naturally draw such obvious -conse- gpences, that he alone is Lord of all things, that he can supply all their wants, and bestow all blessings upon them, and there- fore they ought to pray to him under every distress, and to give thanks when they receive anyofthecomforts oflife from hishands, c c 2
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