We speak of His moral attributes, but we only judge of them by our own; and it is impossible to do otherwise. We attribute to Him justice, goodness, etc., only from the ideas we collect from the small degree of justice and goodness existing among ourselves. But, in fact, what connection is there between our qualities so uncertain and variable, and those of the Supreme Being? Our idea of justice is only that of not allowing our own interest to usurp over the interest of another. The bread which a wife has kneaded out of the flour produced from the wheat which her husband has sown, belongs to her. A hungry savage snatches away her bread, and the woman exclaims against such enormous injustice. The savage quietly answers that nothing is more just, and that it was not for him and his family to expire of famine for the sake of an old woman. At all events, the infinite justice we attribute to God can but little resemble the contradictory notions of justice of this woman and this savage; and yet, when we say that God is just, we only pronounce these words agreeably to our own ideas of justice. We know of nothing belonging to virtue more agreeable than frankness and cordiality, but to attribute infinite frankness and cordiality to God would amount to an absurdity. We have such confused notions of the attributes of the Supreme Being, that some schools endow Him with prescience, an infinite foresight which excludes all contingent event, while other schools contend for prescience without contingency. Lastly, since the Sorbonne has declared that God can make a stick divested of two ends, and that the same thing can at once be and not be, we know not what to say, being in eternal fear of advancing a heresy. One thing _may_, however, be asserted without danger--that God is infinite, and man exceedingly bounded. The mind of man is so extremely narrow, that Pascal has said: "Do you believe it impossible for God to be infinite and without parts? I wish to convince you of an existence infinite and indivisible--it is a mathematical point--moving everywhere with infinite swiftness, for it is in all places, and entire in every place." Nothing more absurd was ever asserted, and yet it has been said by the author of the "Provincial Letters." It is sufficient to give men of sense the ague. INFLUENCE. Everything around exercises some influence upon us, either physically or morally. With this truth we are well acquainted. Influence may be exerted upon a being without touching, without moving that being. In short, matter has been demonstrated to possess the astonishing power of gravitating without contact, of acting at immense distances. One idea influences another; a fact not less incomprehensible.