Although the lectures on Natural Theology have disappeared, the lectures on Morals were elaborated and published in 1759 as _The Theory of Moral Sentiments_. From this, his first important work, we may sufficiently ascertain how far Smith’s philosophy of life was based upon religious conceptions. Fortune governs the world. Nature intended the happiness and perfection of the species. Every part of nature, when attentively surveyed, equally demonstrates the providential care of its Author. Smith’s own scepticism is so carefully phrased and so disguised in soft language, that a stupid reader is never perplexed, a devout one never offended. Take, for example, his reflections upon the doctrine of a future life. That there is a world to come, he says in a passage of striking eloquence, “is a doctrine in every respect so venerable, so comfortable to the weakness, so flattering to the grandeur of human nature, that the virtuous man, who has the misfortune to doubt of it, cannot possibly avoid wishing most earnestly and anxiously to believe it. It could never have been exposed to the derision of the scoffer, had not the distribution of rewards and punishments, which some of its most zealous assertors have taught us was to be made in that world to come, been too frequently in direct opposition to all our moral sentiments.” Smith had no great respect for the devout. To him the ritual and worship of the Deity seemed like the service and courtship of kings. He refuses to believe that an all-wise Deity would have a mind for adulation or would offer heavenly rewards to those who consecrate their lives to His worship:— “That the assiduous courtier is often more favoured than the faithful and active servant; that attendance and adulation are often shorter and surer roads to preferment than merit or service; and that a campaign at Versailles or St. James’s is often worth two either in Germany or Flanders, is a complaint which we have all heard from many a venerable, but discontented, old officer. But what is considered as the greatest reproach even to the weakness of earthly sovereigns, has been ascribed, as an act of justice, to divine perfection; and the duties of devotion, the public and private worship of the Deity, have been represented even by men of virtue and abilities, as the sole virtues which can either entitle to reward or exempt from punishment in the life to come.” His indignation flames out against celebrated doctors, both civil and ecclesiastical, who have questioned whether faith should be kept with rebels and heretics (“those unlucky persons who, when things have come to a certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to be of the weaker party”). Of all the corrupters of moral sentiments, “faction and fanaticism have always been by far the greatest.”