Yes, this is indeed the beginning and the end of all knowledge and virtue; the way and the goal; the enigma and its solution. The soul cannot prove to herself the existence of a God; she cannot prove her own immortality; she cannot prove the beauty of virtue, or the deformity of vice; her own consciousness, the first ground of this belief, cannot be compassed by the reason, that inferior faculty which the Deity gave for practical, temporal purposes only. This consciousness is divine; it is part of the Deity; through this alone we sympathize with the imperishable, the infinite, the nature of things. Were reason commensurate with this part of our intellectual life, what should we do with the things of time? The leaves and buds of earth would wither beneath the sun of our intelligence; its crags and precipices would be levelled before the mighty torrent of our will; all its dross would crumble to ashes under the fire of our philosophy. God willed it otherwise; WHY, who can guess? Why this planet, with its tormenting limitations of space and time, was ever created,--why the soul was cased in this clogging, stifling integument, (which, while it conveys to the soul, in a roundabout way, knowledge which she might obviously acquire much better without its aid, tempts constantly to vice and indolence, suggesting sordid wants, and hampering or hindering thought,)--I pretend not to say. Let others toil to stifle sad distrust a thousand ways. Let them satisfy themselves by reasonings on the nature of free agency; let them imagine it was impossible men should be purified to angels, except by resisting the temptations of guilt and crime; let them be _reasonably_ content to feel that "Faith conquers in no easy war; By toil alone the prize is won; The grape dissolves not in the cup-- Wine from the crushing press must run; And would a spirit heavenward go, A heart must break in death below."