It is maintained only by a painful and sustained conflict, which is but ill-concealed by the vehemence of its protestations, and often significantly indicated by the very extravagance of its zeal. Add to this, that Atheism itself affords no guarantee against future suffering. It may deny a Providence here and a judgment hereafter, it may even deny a future state of conscious existence, and take refuge in the hope of annihilation that it may escape from the dread prospect of retribution; but it cannot affirm the _impossibility_, it can only doubt the _certainty_ of these things; and in their bare possibility there is enough at once to impose an obligation to serious inquiry, and to occasion the deepest anxiety, especially in seasons of affliction or danger, which awaken reflective thought. "_Atheism_," said the acute but skeptical Bayle, "_does not shelter us from the fear of eternal suffering_." But, even if it did, what influence would it exert on our present happiness? Would it not limit our enjoyments, by confining our views within the narrow range of things seen and temporal? Would it not deprive us of the loftiest hopes? Would it not repress our highest aspirations, by interdicting the contemplation of the noblest Object of thought, the Ideal Standard of truth and excellence, the Moral Glory of the Universe? Would it not diminish the pleasure which we derive even from earthly objects, and aggravate the bitterness of every trial? How wretched must be the condition of those who are "proud of being the offspring of chance, in love with universal disorder, whose happiness is involved in the belief of there being no witness to their designs, and who are at ease only because they suppose themselves _inhabitants of a forsaken and fatherless world_!"[21] "No one in creation," said Jean Paul, "is so alone as the denier of God: he mourns, with an orphaned heart that has lost its great Father, by the corpse of Nature which no World-Spirit moves and holds together, and which grows in its grave; and he mourns by that corpse till he himself crumble off from it. The whole world lies before him, like the Egyptian Sphynx of stone, half-buried in the sand; and the All is the cold iron mask of a formless Eternity."[22]