"There might remain among a few of the more enlightened some occasional glimpses of religious truth, as we find to have been the case in the Pagan world; but the degradation of the great mass of the people to that ignorance, and idolatry, and superstition, out of which the Gospel had emancipated them, would be certain and complete.

This retrograde movement might be retarded by the advantages which we have derived from that system, whose influence we should continue to feel long after we had ceased to acknowledge the divinity of its source.

But these advantages would by degrees lose their efficacy, even as mere matters of speculation, and give place to the workings of fancy, and credulity, and corruption.

A radiance might still glow on the high places of the earth after the sun of Revelation had gone down; and the brighter and the longer it had shone, the more gradual would be the decay of that light and warmth which it had left behind it.

But every where there would be the sad tokens of a departed glory and of a coming night.