divine monsters of modern India; the infinite array of grim deformities hallowed by American, Asiatic, and African superstition.  I imagined, notwithstanding the vastness of that Crystal Pantheon, there would still be crowds of their godships who would be obliged to wait outside, having come too late to exhibit their perfections to advantage.  However, as I went in fancy up the long aisles, and saw, to the right and the left, the admiring crowds of worshippers, grimacing, and mowing, and prostrating themselves, with a folly which might lead one reasonably to suppose, that, miserable as were the gods, they were gods indeed compared with such worshippers, I imagined my worthy friend Fellowes in the corner where the Bible, in its 120 languages, is now kept, employed in delivering a lecture on the admirable clearness of those intuitions of spiritual truth which constitute each man’s particular oracle, and the superfluity of all ‘external’ revelation.  This was, I confess, a little too much for my gravity, and I was involuntarily guilty of the rudeness for which I now apologize.”  It was certainly a ridiculous vision enough; and we made ourselves very merry by pursuing it for a little while.

Presently the company resumed their solutions off the great problem.  The Deist remarked, “that one and only one thing was plain, and indubitable,”—­for he was a dogmatist in his way;—­it was, “that intellect and power to an indefinite extent had been at work in the universe, but whether the Being to whom these attributes belonged took any cognizance of man, or his actions, he had never been able to make up his mind.”  “Yet surely it does make a slight difference,” said Harrington, “since if God takes no cognizance of man, then, as Cicero long ago remarked of the idle dogs of Epicurus, —­I mean gods of Epicurus, I beg their pardon, but really it does not matter which consonant comes first,—­atheism and deism are much the same thing.”  “Why,” said the Deist, “there is as much difference as in the theories of our ‘intuitional’ friends here, one of whom admits, and another denies, the future existence of man; for if we be the ephemeral insects the latter supposes, it little matters what system of religion we espouse or abjure.  However, I am clear that, if God require any duty of us, it is that we should reverence him as the Creator of all things,—­prayer to him is an absurdity,—­and perform those offices of honest men which are so clearly the dictates of conscience,—­the reward and punishment being exclusively the result of present laws.”

“Which laws,” said his next neighbor, “often secure no reward or punishment at all,—­or rather, often give the reward to the vice of man, and the punishment to his virtue.”  “Very true,” rejoined the Deist, “and I must say,”—­sagely shaking his head,—­“that such things make me often suspect the whole of that slippery, uncertain thing called ‘natural religion,’ whether as taught by the elder deists or modified by our modern spiritualists.  Surely they may be abundantly charged with the same faults with which they tax the Christian; for they are full of interminable disputes about the ‘truths’ or ‘sentiments’ of their theology.”