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There is in the nature of man, or in the circumstances in which he is conditioned, something which leads him to recognise and worship a superior being. What that something is, is not important in our present inquiry:—whether it be a constitutional instinct inwrought by the Maker—whether it be a deduction of universal reason, inferring a first cause from the things that are made—whether it be the effect of tradition, descending from the first worshippers, through all the tribes of the human family—whether any or all of these be the cause, the fact is the same—Man is a religious being: HE WILL WORSHIP.

In view of this propension of human nature, philosophers, in seeking a generic appellation for man, have denominated him a “religious animal.” The characteristic is true of him in whatever part of the world he may be found, and in whatever condition; and it has been true of him in all ages of which we have any record, either fabulous or authentic.

Navigators have, in a few instances, reported that isolated tribes of men, whom they visited, recognised the existence of no superior being: subsequent researches, however, have generally corrected the error; and, in all cases, when it has been supposed that a tribe of men was found believing in no god, the fact has been stated as an evidence of their degradation below the mass of their species, and of their approximation to the confines of brute nature. Of the whole family of man, existing in all ages, and scattered over the four quarters of the globe, and in the isles of the sea, there is scarcely one well-authenticated exception to the fact, that, moved by an impulse of nature, or the force of circumstances, man worships something which he believes to be endowed with the attributes of a superior being.