It was equally clear to me, that the attempt, by means of political organizations, and revolutions directed against the papacy, or any church organization, Catholic or Protestant, to root out Christianity from the hearts of the people, must at last prove a failure. After all, there is a natural religiosity in man, and though he will often restrain and mortify it, and act only in view of purely secular ends,—practically live as if there were no God, and no hereafter,—he will almost always return to the order of religious ideas, and adopt or institute some kind of religious worship to which he will subordinate his political ideas, and his secular ends. An Epicurus may deny Providence, a Lucretius may sing, in no mean poetry, that it is impossible, “_revocare defunctos_,” and even Cicero may laugh at augurs and aruspices, and doubt the immortality of the soul, yet the sentiment of an invisible Force, of a mysterious Power that overshadows us, is universal, and the sceptical philosopher feels an indefinable shudder of awe, perhaps of fear, whenever he finds himself alone in the dark. Everywhere the shades of Acheron wander or flit around and before him. Even in the midst of our pleasures the thought of the invisible and the supernal intrude unbidden to mar our festivities, and to dash our joy with an indefinable sadness, shame, and remorse. Even a Voltaire trembles and blasphemes in dying, at the thought of being denied Christian burial, and a Volney, who resolves God into blind Nature, and Christianity into astrology or astronomy, prays lustily to the God he disowns, in a storm on Lake Erie. Do what we will, we cannot divest ourselves of the belief or apprehension of invisible powers, who hold our destiny in their hands; and a people absolutely without any religion, or at least superstition, is never to be found.