‘There,’ said he, ‘the tenants of these religious seclusions dug their own tombs, by the light of the moon, in the cemeteries of their own cloisters. Their couch was a coffin. Some of them occasionally wandered away to sojourn among the ruins of Memphis and Babylon, striking the chords of the harp of David, surrounded by beasts of prey. Some condemned themselves to perpetual silence. Others sung a continual hymn, echoing the sighs of Job, the lamentations of Jeremiah, or the penitential songs of the prophet king. Their monasteries were built on sites the most savage, on the summits of Lebanon, in the deep forests of Gaul, or on the crags of the British shores. How sad the knell of the religious bells, heard at the noon of night, must have sounded when calling the vestals to their vigils and prayers! The sounds, as they swelled and died away, mingled the last strains of the hymns with the distant dashing of the waves. How profound must have been the meditations of the solitary who, from his grated window, indulged in revery, as his eye wandered over the illimitable sea, perhaps agitated with a tempest! What a contrast between the fury of the waves and the calm of his retreat! The expiring cries of men are heard as they dash upon the rocks at the foot of the asylum of peace. Infinity stretches out on one side of their cell; and on the other the slab of a tomb alone separates between eternity and life. All the different forms of misfortune, remembrance, manners, and the scenes of nature concurred to render the christian religion the genius of melancholy.’[53a] Can it be thought, for a moment, possible that sighs without end, the love of deserts and the hope of the tomb are all the consolations that this divine religion is calculated to bring to the heart of man? Such an error could only have had its origin in an unregulated imagination. The christian religion, though pensive and serious, is not sad. Less brilliant, less imaginative than paganism, less friendly to pleasure, she is far more favorable to happiness. My opinion in regard to the legitimate tendency of religion, is not only different but directly opposite. A pure religion must produce tranquillity, confidence and joy. It is departure from religious views which are true and just, that is followed by a vague sadness, gloom and despondency.