How happens it then, that some pretend, that atheism frees us from every kind of terror about futurity? I cannot perceive, that such a conclusion flows from this fatal system. A God, such as my heart delineates, encourages and moderates all my feelings; I say to myself, He is good and indulgent, He knows our weakness, He loves to produce happiness; and I see the advances of death without terror, and often with hope. But every fear would become reasonable, if I lived under the dominion of an insensible nature, whose laws and revolutions are unknown: I seek for some means to escape from its power;—but even death cannot afford me a retreat, or space an asylum. I reflect, if it is possible, to find compassion and goodness; but here is no prime intelligence, no first cause, a blind nature surrounds us, and governs imperiously. I in vain demand, what is to be done with me? it is deaf to my voice. Devoid of will, thought, and feeling, it is governed by an irresistible force, whose motion is a mystery never to be unfolded. What a view for the human mind, to anticipate the destruction of all our primitive ideas of order, justice, and goodness! Shall I further say, when even, in every system, the entrance of the future was unknown, I should be less unhappy and forlorn, if it was to a father, a benefactor, that I committed the deposit of life which I held from him; this last communication with the Master of the World would mitigate my pains; my eyes, when closing, would perceive His power; that I should not lose all, I might still hope that God remained with those I loved, and find some comfort in the thought, that my destiny was united to His will, that my existence and the employments I devoted myself to, formed one of the indelible points of His eternal remembrance; and that the incomprehensible darkness I was going to plunge into, is equally a part of His empire. But when a feeling and elevated soul, which sometimes enjoys a sentiment of its own grandeur, should certainly know, that dragged by a blind motion, it was going to be dissipated, to be scattered in that dreary waste, where all that is most vile on earth is indifferently precipitated; such a thought would blight the noblest actions, and be a continual source of sadness and despondency. Save us from these dreadful reflections, sublime and cherished belief of a God! afford us the courage and comfort we need, and guard our minds, as from fatal phantoms, from all those vain suppositions, those errors of reasoning and metaphysical subtleties, which interpose between man and his Creator! And we, full of confidence in the first lesson of nature, will take for a guide that interior sentiment which is not thought, but something more, which neither reasons nor conjectures; but perhaps forms the closest connexion and most certain communication with those grand truths which the understanding alone can never reach.