In modern times, a great German philosopher, who flourished toward the close of the seventeenth century, and was no less famous for his historical learning than for his mathematical discoveries, made the memorable remark, that the last sect in the whole development of Christian revelation, and toward the close of modern history--the last sect, and also the most prevalent and most fearful, would be that of atheism. This dictum, at the time at which it was pronounced, which was somewhere about the transition from the anxiety and oppression of the seventeenth century to the enlightenment and self-complaisancy of the eighteenth, must have appeared a perfect paradox. But now that its fulfillment seems, both to our eyes and understanding, so close at hand, we recognize with amazement, not to say with a slight feeling of horror, its deep oracular truth.
Now, as the beginning and the end often bear a wonderful resemblance to each other, it is not improbable that the first sect was of the same kind and nature as it has been predicted that the final heresy will be. A mere dead unbelief and purely negative atheism, it is true, can as little have prevailed in those times as a symbolically degraded and immorally materializing heathenism. For it was only after the higher magical powers were withdrawn from man, that the fancy became in this sense, and to such an extreme degree, symbolical and figurative. Or, perhaps, we may more correctly say, that of all high endowments now lost forever, a purely figurative fancy was all that remained; whereupon, in opposition to it, the other erroneous extreme of abstract thought gradually attained to a greater and undue development. And we may with good reason assume, that with this fearful catastrophe the very consciousness of man was essentially altered and changed. Of the wild and lawless state of the generations before the Flood, we can not, perhaps, form a juster conception than by regarding it as an open rebellion and organized revolt of man against his Maker and benefactor, a complete and visible supremacy of the evil principle and the wicked spirits on earth, and an intimate union between man and the devil. It must have resembled the description which we meet with in some old books of the future reign of antichrist. Such a state of things may justly be denominated atheism. But, however this may be, and whatever conception we may form, and whatever historical shape we may give to particulars in this domain (where, after all, we can not get beyond conjecture and presumptions, or, it may be, hypothetical history, based on probabilities), one general point is incontestable. Truly noble, in those primeval times of a pure natural faith, must have been the intellectual powers and development of the first ancestors of the world and those great progenitors of the human race, and fearful, in the same degree, must have been the fall and corruption which followed the abuse of those high privileges. For man's mental powers, still subsisting in the plenitude of their productive energy, and his lordship over nature being undisturbed, his corruption must have generated the wildest and most monstrous excesses. Consequently, amid the universal reign of evil and wickedness, the only course that remained was the total destruction of the existing generation, and the complete renovation, or, rather, a new commencement of mankind.