In the fever and tumult of worldly pleasures and pursuits, the voice of wisdom has little chance to be heard, and it seems necessary that misfortune should have forced the mind in upon itself, before we become inclined to find resources in religion. Then we invoke this sublime and consoling power, and like the friend that avoids our prosperity and our festivals, but returns to cheer our misfortunes, this celestial friend is at hand to offer her sustaining succor. We may class all those pleasures as noxious, which will not associate with this august visitant. Even in our periods of happiness, if we pause for the reflection of a moment, we find the need of immortality. All the generous and tender affections acquire a new charm in alliance with religious ideas, in the same manner as objects beautiful in themselves, receive a new lustre when a pure light is thrown upon them. Filial piety becomes more touching in those children who pray with fervor for the preservation of the life of a mother. Let a pious courage guide the sister of charity, and she becomes the angel of consolation, as she visits the abodes of misery. Even virtue itself does not receive its celestial impress, except in alliance with religious sentiments. A few of the higher philosophers among the great ancients, and Fenelon, Newton, Milton and a few other men of immortal name, saw the divinity as He is, and contemplated the perfect model of his infinite perfections. Their efforts tended to coöperate with the divine views of order and harmony, in constantly directing human actions and thoughts towards good. The beautiful system of the gospel has the same simplicity of object; and its tendency to honor and meliorate humanity is directed by the highest wisdom. Sentiments which give to all our faculties a direction, fertilize genius as well as virtue. High models, in any walk of mind, will never be produced in a world whose inhabitants believe in nothing but matter, fortuitous combinations, and the annihilation of our being. Apostles of atheism! your dreary creed throws an impenetrable gloom upon the universe, and dries the source of all high thoughts. The advocates of these views vaunt the necessity of proclaiming the truth. I, too, am the fearless advocate of the truth, and have no dread of its results. But could I be persuaded, that religious hopes were unfounded, I should be tempted to renounce my confidence in truth itself; and no longer to inculcate the necessity of loving and seeking to propagate it. It is by the light of this divine torch, that real sages have desired to investigate religion. Were it possible that the elevated and consoling ideas, which religion offers, could be baseless and absurd chimeras, error and truth would be so confounded, that there would no longer remain any discriminating sign by which to distinguish the one from the other. Atheists boast that they are the only frank and hardy antagonists of superstition. They are its most effectual allies.