uality, which develops itself and gains force, in
proportion as we elevate ourselves above the material propensities to
which we are subject as citizens of this earth.

XLVII. Those who, throwing themselves on a severe rationalism, will
recognise nothing as true but what is demonstrated to them like
mathematical theorems, will look upon the sentiments above referred to
as delusions of the fancy, because they see them founded but upon
feeling; but they who think so are manifestly in error. If faith in God,
in His providence, and in the immortality of the human soul, were a mere
product of the imagination, it would last only so long as the semblance,
which had given it aliment, exists; and when man is awakened to the
sense of realities and facts calculated to destroy the delusion, he
would be seen to withdraw from the meshes of his error, and his reason
triumphant would confess the former aberration of the mind; yet it
happens not so. In the moment we are struck by some grave calamity, when
we see fond hopes, long cherished, vanish in an instant, or when we are
on the point of losing what is dearest to us, why is faith in God and in
His providence not then weakened in the religious man? Why, on the
contrary, does he cling to it more and more? The reason is, because such
a faith is not a cold theorem, against which some doubt may eventually
arise, but a truth rooted in the love inherent in our nature; and
consequently it acquires vigour with the growth of love, and its power
cannot be extinguished but when we cease to love. So, also, the other
impulses to heroism and to exalted moral action, by which we are induced
to great sacrifices, or led to believe ourselves capable of
accomplishing them, are produced in us by faith in an eternal Source of
pure love, by that faith which carries with itself the surety of a
future life and a future kingdom founded upon love. Therefore, in
proportion as man succeeds in subduing his own passions, or as these
grow faint by age or other causes, so his love grows more vigorous; and
as earthly objects gradually disappear, so faith rises and shews itself
all-pervading and invincible.

XLVIII. As a condition indispensable to the entertainment of faith, we
have already insisted on the necessity of previously freeing the heart
from the sway of the sensual appetites; and it is not without a grave
reason, for therein precisely consists the secret of the solution of the
great question agitated