"I thank God, my son, for giving you wisdom to reason in this way. But what is still your inference from all this, as to true religion?"
"Why, my dear father, my inference is still in confirmation of my first answer to your question relative to the true religion, that it consists in our imitating the Deity in his goodness. Every wise parent, wishing to allure his children to any particular virtue, is careful to set them the fairest examples of the same, as knowing that example is more powerful than precept. Now since the Deity, throughout all his works, so invariably employs his great power and wisdom as the ministers of his benevolence to make his creatures happy, what can this be for but an example to us; teaching that if we wish to please him--the true end of all religion--we must imitate him in his moral goodness, which if we would but all do as steadily as he does, we should recall the golden age, and convert this world into Paradise.
"All this looks very fair, Ben; but yet after all what are we to do without FAITH?"
"Why, father, as to Faith, I cannot say; not knowing much about it. But this I can say, that I am afraid of any substitutes to the moral character of the Deity. In short, sir, I don't love the fig-leaf."
"Fig-leaf! I don't understand you, child: what do you mean by the fig-leaf?"
"Why, father, we read in the Bible that soon as Adam had lost that true image of the Deity, his MORAL GOODNESS, instead of striving to recover it again, he went and sewed fig-leaves together to cover himself with."
"I am to the point, father. I mean to say that as Adam sought a vain fig-leaf covering, rather than the imitation of the Deity in moral goodness, so his posterity have ever since been fond of running after fig-leaf substitutes."
"Aye! well I should be glad to hear you explain a little on that head, Ben."
"Father, I don't pretend to explain a subject I don't understand, but I find in PLUTARCH'S LIVES and the HEATHEN ANTIQUITIES, which I read in your old divinity library, and which no doubt give a true account of religion among the ancients, that when they were troubled on account of their crimes, they do not seem once to have thought of conciliating the Deity by _reformation_, and by acts of benevolence and goodness to be like him. No, they appear to have been too much enamoured of lust, and pride, and revenge, to relish moral goodness; such lessons were too much against the grain. But still something must be done to appease the Deity. Well then, since they could not sum up courage enough to attempt it by imitating his goodness, they would try it by coaxing his vanity--they would build him grand temples; and make him mighty sacrifices; and rich offerings. This I am told, father, was _their_ fig-leaf."