an impious education and by maternal example, they concern themselves not about their mother. If she surveys the past, she beholds a pathless waste; her virtues have left no traces behind them. For the first time her saddened thoughts turn toward heaven, and she begins to think how much more consolatory it would have been to have a religion. Unavailing regret! The crowning punishment of atheism in this world is to desire faith without being able to acquire it. When, at the term of her career, she discovers the delusions of a false philosophy,—when annihilation, like an appalling meteor, begins to appear above the horizon of death,—she would fain return to God; but it is too late : the mind, hardened by incredulity, rejects all conviction. Oh! what a frightful solitude appears before her, when God and man retire at once from her view! She dies, this unfortunate woman,— expiring in the arms of a hireling nurse, or of some man, perhaps, who turns with disgust from her protracted sufferings. A common coffin now encloses all that remains of her. At her funeral we see no daughter overpowered with grief, no sons-in-law or grandchildren in tears, forming, with the blessing of the people and the hymns of religion, so worthy an escort for the mother of a family. Perhaps only a son, who is unknown, and who knows not himself the dishonorable secret of his birth, will happen to meet the mournful convoy, and will inquire the name of the deceased, whose body is about to be cast to the worms, to which it had been promised by the atheist herself!

How different is the lot of the religious woman! Her days are replete with joy; she is respected, beloved by her husband, her children, her household; all place unbounded confidence in her, because they are firmly convinced of the fidelity of one who is faithful to her God. The faith of this Christian is strengthened by her happiness, and her happiness by her faith; she believes in God because she is happy, and she is happy because she believes in God.

It is enough for a mother to look upon her smiling infant to be convinced of the reality of supreme felicity. The bounty of Providence is most signally displayed in the cradle of man. What affecting harmonies! Could they be only the effects of inanimate matter? The child is born, the breast fills; the little guest has no teeth that can wound the maternal bosom: he grows, the

milk becomes more nourishing; he is weaned, and the wonderful fountain ceases to flow. This woman, before so weak, has all at once acquired such strength as enables her to bear fatigues which a robust man could not possibly endure. What is it that awakens her at midnight, at the very moment when her infant is ready to demand the accustomed repast? Whence comes that address which she never before possessed? How she handles the tender flower without hurting it! Her attentions seem to be the fruit of the experience of her whole life, and yet this is her first-born! The slightest noise terrified the virgin: where are the embattled armies, the thunders, the perils, capable of appalling the mother? Formerly this woman required delicate food, elegant apparel, and a soft couch; the least breath of air incommoded her: now, a crust of bread, a common dress, a handful of straw, are sufficient; nor wind, nor rain, scarcely makes any impression, while she has in her breast a drop of milk to nourish her son and in her tattered garments a corner to cover him.

Such being the state of things, he must be extremely obstinate who would not espouse the cause in behalf of which not only reason finds the most numerous evidences, but to which morals, happiness, and hope, nay, even instinct itself, and all the desires of the soul, naturally impel us; for if it were as true as it is false, that the understanding keeps the balance even between God and atheism, still it is certain that it would preponderate much in favor of the former; for, besides half of his reason, man puts the whole weight of his heart into the scale of the Deity.

Of this truth you will be thoroughly convinced if you examine the very different manner in which atheism and religion proceed in their reasoning.

Religion adduces none but general proofs; she founds her judg ment only on the harmony of the heavens and the immutable laws of the universe; she views only the graces of nature, the charming instincts of animals, and their exquisite conformities with

man.

Atheism sets before you nothing but hideous exceptions; it sees naught but calamities, unhealthy marshes, destructive volcanoes, noxious animals; and, as if it were anxious to conceal itself in the mire, it interrogates the reptiles and insects that they may furnish it with proofs against God.

Religion speaks only of the grandeur and beauty of man. Atheism is continually setting the leprosy and plague before our eyes.

Religion derives her reasons from the sensibility of the soul, from the tenderest attachments of life, from filial piety, conjugal love, and maternal affection.

Atheism reduces every thing to the instinct of the brute, and, as the first argument of its system, displays to you a heart that naught is capable of moving.

Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life.

On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity.

CHAPTER VI.

CONCLUSION OF THE DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY-STATE OF PUNISHMENTS AND REWARDS IN A FUTURE LIFE-ELYSIUM OF THE ANCIENTS.

THE existence of a Supreme Being once acknowledged, and the immortality of the soul granted, there can be no farther dif ficulty to admit a state of rewards and punishments after this life; this last tenet is a necessary consequence of the other two. All that remains for us, therefore, is to show how full of morality and poetry this doctrine is, and how far superior the religion of the gospel is in this respect to all other religions.

In the Elysium of the ancients we find none but heroes and persons who had either been fortunate or distinguished on earth. Children, and, apparently, slaves and the lower class of men,—that is to say, misfortune and innocence, were banished to the infernal regions. And what rewards for virtue were those feasts and dances, the everlasting duration of which would be sufficient to constitute one of the torments of Tartarus!

Mahomet promises other enjoyments. His paradise is a land

of musk and of the purest wheaten flour, watered by the river of life and the Acawtar, another stream which rises under the roots of Tuba, or the tree of happiness. Streams springing up in grottos of ambergris, and bordered with aloes, murmur beneath golden palm-trees. On the shores of a quadrangular lake stand a thousand goblets made of stars, out of which the souls predestined to felicity imbibe the crystal wave. All the elect, seated on silken carpets, at the entrance of their tents, eat of the terrestrial globe, reduced by Allah into a wonderful cake. A number of eunuchs and seventy-two black-eyed damsels place before them, in three hundred dishes of gold, the fish Nun and the ribs of the buffalo Balam. The angel Israfil sings, without ceasing, the most enchanting songs; the immortal virgins with their voices accompany his strains; and the souls of virtuous poets, lodged in the throats of certain birds that are hovering round the tree of happiness, join the celestial choir. Meanwhile the crystal bells suspended in the golden palm-trees are melodiously agitated by a breeze which issues from the throne of God.1

The joys of the Scandinavian heaven were sanguinary, but there was a degree of grandeur in the pleasures ascribed to the martial shades, and in the power of gathering the storm and guiding the whirlwind which they were said to possess. This paradise was the image of the kind of life led by the barbarian of the north. Wandering along the wild shores of his country, the dreary sounds emitted by ocean plunged his soul into deep reveries; thought succeeded thought, as in the billows murmur followed murmur, till, bewildered in the mazes of his desires, he mingled with the elements, rode upon the fleeting clouds, rocked the leafless forest, and flew across the seas upon the wings of the tempest.

The hell of the unbelieving nations is as capricious as their heaven. Our observations on the Tartarus of the ancients we shall reserve for the literary portion of our work, on which we are about to enter. Be this as it may, the rewards which Christianity promises to virtue, and the punishments with which it threatens guilt, produce at the first glance a conviction of their truth. The heaven and hell of Christians are not devised after the manners of any particular people, but founded on the general

1 The Koran and the Arabic poets.

ideas that are adapted to all nations and to all classes of society. What can be more simple, and yet more sublime, than the truths conveyed in these few words!-the felicity of the righteous in a future life will consist in the full possession of God; the misery of the wicked will arise from a knowledge of the perfections of the Deity, and from being forever deprived of their enjoy

ment.

It may perhaps be said that here Christianity merely repeats the lessons of the schools of Plato and Pythagoras. In this case, it must at least be admitted that the Christian religion is not the religion of shallow minds, since it inculcates what are acknowledged to have been the doctrines of sages.

The Gentiles, in fact, reproached the primitive Christians with being nothing more than a sect of philosophers; but were it certain (what is not proved) that the sages of antiquity entertained the same notions that Christianity holds respecting a future state, still, a truth confined within a narrow circle of chosen disciples is one thing, and a truth which has become the universal consolation of mankind is another. What the brightest geniuses of Greece discovered by a last effort of reason is now publicly taught in every church; and the laborer, for a few pence, may purchase, in the catechism of his children, the most sublime secrets of the ancient sects.

We shall say nothing here on the subject of Purgatory, as we shall examine it hereafter under its moral and poetical aspects. As to the principle which has produced this place of expiation, it is founded in reason itself, since between vice and virtue there is a state of tepidity which merits neither the punishment of hell nor the rewards of heaven,