I must observe besides, that part of the country people, especially in harvest time, and other seasons, when the husbandman is particularly busy, assist only at early mass, and then they see but a part of the religious ceremonies[4]. And, if the practice and liberty of working on a Sunday was more extended, the inhabitants of the country, still more confined to the first mass, would hear neither prayers nor instructive discourses in their own language during the whole year. Certainly there must be something altered in these religious institutions in order to make them more efficaciously serve to support morality, and comfort the most numerous class of the human race. Country people, whose labour produces our wealth, ought to be taken care of with paternal anxiety; and since they are not exposed to those disorderly passions which find nourishment in a metropolis; since mild and prudent means still suffice to maintain them in the habit of duty; both the superiors in church and state have to answer, in some measure, for the corruption of their manners and dispositions. CHAP. XI. _That the single Idea of a God is a sufficient Support of Morality._ After having shown that morality has need of a supernatural support, you have reason to expect, that I should explain the intimate and immediate relation which unites religion to the love of virtue, and the observance of order. I will endeavour, then, to discuss this important question; and in order to arrive at the truth, I shall follow first the course of those simple sentiments and natural thoughts, which guide the mind and the heart of man, in every climate and country under heaven. It is easy to unite all the moral legislation, and the entire system of our duties, by means only of the idea of a God. The universe, notwithstanding its magnificence and its immensity, would be a mere nothing, if its Supreme Author had not peopled it with intelligent beings, capable of contemplating so many wonders, and of receiving happiness from them; but the faculties with which we are endowed, consciousness of possessing them, and the liberty to act, all announce to us that we are united to a grand combination, that we have a part to take on the vast stage of the world.