What then is the tic which binds the people to their sovereign ? They do not respect him on account of his own individual merits or excellences, nor on account of the advantages they suppose themselves to derive from the form of government of which lie is the head. These advantages they cannot ascertain or discriminate; and of his personal merits they have no opportunity of judging for themselves. But they love and reverence their prince, as the representative of times that arc past, as inseparably connected with the remembrances of their youth, as the depository of that blind confidence which, in their early years, they were so eager to grant. He is the king under whom their fathers lived ; and this idea recalls the time when they were blest with parents, the object of their first affections, whose happiness was so intimately entwined in theirs, and who did all in their power to render their life agreeable and delightful. The same sovereign now reigns; or his son, or his grand-son, occupies his place; and the same system of government now obtains which existed in the good old times, which they believe free from every abuse, because abuses did not come within the scope of their observation. The historian, in his researches into the events of past ages, is not unfrequently surprised to find, that kings, distinguished by crimes of the basest kind, and by the grossest abuse of power, have yet been the ob jects of the love and the confidence of their suhjects. In vain has he endeavoured to trace the cause of this appa rent contrariety. The principle which we are discussing explains it in the only satisfactory manner. It is not the king, individually, that they love,—it is the time past, the period of their youth.
The respect which we entertain for ancient families, for ancient authorities, for ancient laws, for an ancient consti tution, results from the same principle. Time is the great enemy of our race, and whatever has tiiumphed over time, becomes clear to us on that very account. But, in truth, we do not admire or value a thing solely and entirely be cause it is old, but because it reminds us of our childhood, and our youth ; for, by a singular association, the two ideas are in our minds closely and indissolubly united. Time past, abstractedly, would not excite our reverence or interest very powerfully, if it did not bring along with it the remembronee of our boyhood, and carry us back to that period when no care and no sorrow was felt, and all was health, enjoyment, and hope.
Every system of religion, even the most wild and ab surd, owes its stability and its influence to similar feelings and principles, and appeals to them as an indubitable mark of its celestial origin. That innate respect for the doc trines of any religious creed, which reappears in the case of those, who, having apparently thrown off for ever the belief of their fathers, yet, after a long interval, return to it with renewed attachment and devotedness ; that slow con version of those who have been long distinguished for in credulity, and an inordinate attachment to the object of sense ; that faith which triumphs over doubt, after doubt had for a long time sapped the Foundation of faith ; that return of the Jew to his tabernacle, of the Mussulman to his niw:que, of the Bonze to his pagod, after having been for a while the victims of infidelity ; that excess of joy felt by the people when Julian reestablished the observance of these ancient superstitions, which seemed to be for ever superseded by the progress of more salutary and more rational doctrines—these facts, and a thousand similar, are daily appealed to by every theological system, as a proof of its respective dignity, influence, and divine origin.
But it is evident that an argument, of which every religion, however erroneous or degrading, may avail itself, ought to he regarded as conclusive for none ; and, in truth, it proves nothing else but the powers and the charms of me mory, particularly the memory which recalls to us the sentiments and the sympathies of our youth.
Every parent, whatever be the theological creed which he has embraced, regards it as a duty to give to his child ren what is called a religious education, that is, to teach them the doctrines in which he was himself educated—to strike their imagination with its wonders--to impress on their tender and pliant hearts reverence and love for its majesty and pinky—and to remove the fear of ignorance by its protection and its consolations. All the poetical 'acuities of youth, which are then so brilliant and so sus ceptible, but which gradually disappear as we advance to the stern age of manhood or of decline, are early associat ed with the national religion, of whatever character that may happen to be. If the parents have themselves con ceived doubts, they carefully conceal these from their children, and wish to transmit to them, pure and unsullied, the faith in which they have ceased to put implicit confi dence. If this faith is contrary to the light of natural rea son, or to the principal foundations of morality ; and if, in such circumstances, a man feels inclined to exercise his own judgment on the subject—to compare his belief with that of former ages—and to entertain doubts of what they believed demonstrably true, the edifice of his religion is demolished before his eyes, often before he can have time to construct or embrace another in place of it ; all his principles are shaken ; he floats in uncertainty ; distrust and scepticism is extended to every object and sentiment ; he regrets the happy time when all was confidence and belief, and when all the distress of doubt and uncertainty were unknown and unheard of. In this disagreeable state of scepticism, few are doomed to continue till the termina tion of their days. When old age, with its feebleness and its terrors, overtakes a man situated as we have described, the faith of his youth, the faith of his fathers, rush upon his mind with double force; he regards it as celestial and divine, and unspeakably endeared to him by the remem brances of his childhood. It recalls all the hopes which he had once so fondly cherished ; it reawakens that love which was once so strong, but which the withering hand of age had now extinguished, and it revives those dreams of the imagination which had either entirely ceased, or lost their power to please. He now wishes to believe what he had so long doubted, because, in believing, he seems as if he were beginning life anew ; and he at length ends his days under the influence of that faith which he had re ceived from his fathers.