We now know what God truly is. We have already seen two of his adorable attributes,--truth and beauty. The most august attribute is revealed to us,--holiness. God is the holy of holies, as the author of the moral law and the good, as the principle of liberty, justice, and charity, as the dispenser of penalty and reward. Such a God is not an abstract God, but an intelligent and free person, who has made us in his own image, from whom we hold the law itself that presides over our destiny, whose judgments we await. It is his love that inspires us in our acts of charity; it is his justice that governs our justice, that of our societies and our laws. If we do not continually remind ourselves that he is infinite, we degrade his nature; but he would be for us as if he were not, if his infinite essence had no forms that pertain to us, the proper forms of our reason and our soul. By thinking upon such a being, man feels a sentiment that is _par excellence_ the religious sentiment. All the beings with whom we are in relation awaken in us different sentiments, according to the qualities that we perceive in them; and should he who possesses all perfections excite in us no particular sentiment? When we think upon the infinite essence of God, when we are penetrated with his omnipotence, when we are reminded that the moral law expresses his will, that he attaches to the fulfilment and the violation of this law recompenses and penalties which he dispenses with an inflexible justice, we cannot guard ourselves against an emotion of respect and fear at the idea of such a grandeur. Then, if we come to consider that this all-powerful being has indeed wished to create us, us of whom he has no need, that in creating us he has loaded us with benefits, that he has given us this admirable universe for enjoying its ever-new beauties, society for ennobling our life in that of our fellow-men, reason for thinking, the heart for loving, liberty for acting; without disappearing, respect and fear are tinged with a sweeter sentiment, that of love. Love, when it is applied to feeble and limited beings, inspires us with a desire to do good to them; but in itself it proposes to itself no advantage from the person loved; we love a beautiful or good object, because it is beautiful or good, without at first regarding whether this love may be useful to its object and ourselves. For a still stronger reason, love, when it ascends to God, is a pure homage rendered to his perfections; it is the natural overflow of the soul towards a being infinitely lovable.