With what you here contend for, I will connect a passage from your sixth number. "He knows that a belief in revelation is not absolutely necessary to a happy life." By bringing these passages together, I am led to understand what you mean by the latter viz. that a belief in a happy future state, is not necessary to our present felicity. This is what you know! What then are you in pursuant of? You pretend to be earnestly solicitous to have your doubts respecting divine revelation removed if possible; you call on me to assist in this work as if you viewed it with deep concern.--If your doubts should be removed, if you should be altogether convinced that God has actually revealed the truth of a a happy immortality, you know it would add nothing to your happiness. Furthermore you argue, following the passage quoted from your sixth number, that this belief in the revelation of a happy futurity is not necessary to produce a virtuous life. Allowing all you argue on this subject, you feel sure that a real conviction of the truth of the christian doctrine, and hope of future blessedness, would be of no advantage to your virtue or happiness! I ask again, what are you in pursuit of? You compliment me too highly in your encomium on the sermon in which I laid down that man is so constituted that he is always willing to exchange that which gives him trouble, for that which gives him comfort. And you advert to this particular sentiment of mine, in your observations on St. Paul's conversion, and very justly refuse to allow him to be an exception of the general rule. But are you not an exception of this rule? Do you not appear to be solicitous to have your doubts removed without expecting the least advantage by it? Are you not employing your time in writing voluminously on a subject which you _know_ can yield you no recompence? In search after the evidences of the christian hope, you cannot say: where is that faithful, that friendly witness by which I can believe, and believing, enjoy as a precious reality that hope which is as an anchor to the soul, both sure and stedfast; which entereth into that within the veil, where our forerunner hath for us entered; which hope would enable me to sing that triumphant song; "O death where is thy sting, O grave where is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." No, this hope would add nothing to your happiness, and what you want it for is not for me to imagine. You can employ the powers of luminous reason in contemplating eternal nothing with sweet complacency. This is "exactly" as it should be! Varying from this the proposition would need to be "pruned!" Dear brother, does reason countenance all this absurdity? If it be a pleasure to contemplate non-existence does it not involve the absurdity of enjoying the expectation of the discontinuance of enjoyment?