"These views," said I, as he calmed, "which you take of life, and its duties and affections, are all false and distorted. It is our duty to try to regulate our thoughts as well as our actions by some steady supporting principle, which mankind have agreed in considering as true, whether it be derived from the direct Word of God or from the written tablets of the heart. The taking away of our life--originally given to us as a trust, or imposed on us by the Author of all good, for certain ends and purposes which are veiled from our view--is undoubtedly in many respects, as regards God himself, ourselves, our children, and our neighbours, a great, flagrant, horrible crime. It is against the law of God, the law of our country, the organic law of our physical constitution, and the moral law of our minds. It is indeed the only act that can be mentioned that is against _all_ these. It does not require me to tell you that suicide, with other murders, was denounced by God himself, speaking in words that all mankind have heard, from the 'thick cloud' that hung over Mount Sinai. You are, I presume, a Christian, and the Sacred Book containing that denunciation lies at your side; and yet you have made the dreadful confession to me, that you have dared to meditate on the breaking, the despising, the contemning of the command of Him who by less than a command--ay, than even a word, by the lifting up of his finger--may consign you to an eternity of agony, in comparison of which all the sorrow you now suffer is less than a grain of sand to the sandbanks of the sea."