The superstitious have brought forth the atheists, and the atheists have re-produced the superstitious; as, in revolutions, resistance produces fury, and that multiplies resistance. I have known excellent men, apparently earnest and docile inquirers for truth, who have desired in vain to establish in their mind these consoling convictions.--Their understanding refused to respond to the wish of their hearts. Why can I not impart this happy conviction to their understanding? My subject precludes reasoning, and I only know arguments that are very simple; but I think with Bacon, that it needs quite as much credulity to adopt the opinion of atheists, as to yield faith to all the reveries of the Talmud or the Koran. The more profoundly I attempt to investigate the doctrines of infidelity, and consider everything that surrounds me, as resulting from the combinations of chance, the play of atoms, the efforts of brute matter, the more my inquiries are involved in darkness. I strive in vain to give to any hypothesis of atheism the honest semblance of probability. Matter cannot reflect upon the order which its different parts require. Neither can those parts interchange reason and discussion. Neither an atom, nor a globe can say to others of their class, ‘such are the courses in which we must move.’ Let us simplify difficulties, as much as possible, and admit that matter has always existed; let us even suppose motion essential to it; a supreme intelligence is none the less necessary to the harmony of the universe. Without a governor of worlds, I can only conceive of nihility or chaos. From the sublimest of all thoughts, there is a God, flow all the truths which my heart desires. The beautiful superstructure of Christianity results, as a corollary, or ultimate inference, from this consoling axiom. The system which rejects the soul’s immortality, is equally absurd with that of atheism. Of the different arguments against the being of a God, the most striking one is that which is drawn from the evils which prevail on the earth. The first thought of every man of sensibility, is, that had he the power to make a world, he would banish misery from it, and so arrange the order of things, as that existence should be, to all conscious beings, a succession of moments, each marked by happiness. But infirmities, vices, misery, sorrow and death pursue us. How reconcile the misery of the creation with the power and beneficence of the Creator? How resolve this strange problem? How explain this revolting contradiction? Immortality is the only solution of the enigma of life.[55]