wards Heaven, and says, My God! If we are witnesses of
one of those instances of revolting injustice which stir the conscience
in its profoundest depths, and which could not on earth meet with
adequate punishment, we think within ourselves,--There is a Judge on
high! If we are reproved by our own conscience, the voice of that
conscience, which disturbs and sometimes torments us, reminds us that
though we may be shut out from all human view, there is no less an Eye
which sees us, and a just award awaiting us. Thus it is (I am seeking to
establish facts) that the thought of God operates, so to speak, in the
souls of those who believe in Him. If you look for the meaning common to
all these manifestations of man's heart, what do you find? Fear, hope,
thanksgiving, prayer. To whom is all this addressed? To a Power
intelligent and free, which knows us, and is able to act upon our
destinies. This is the idea which is found at the basis of all
religions; not only of the religion of the only God, but of the most
degraded forms of idolatrous worship. All religion rests upon the
sentiment of one or more invisible Powers, superior to nature and to
humanity.

When philosophical curiosity is awakened, it disengages from the general
sentiment of power the definite idea of the cause which becomes the
explanation of the phenomena. The reason of man, by virtue of its very
constitution, finds a need of conceiving of an absolute cause which
escapes by its eternity the lapse of time, and by its infinite character
the bounds of limited existences; a principle, the necessary being of
which depends on no other; in a word a unique cause, establishing by its
unity the universal harmony. So, when reason meets with the idea of the
sole and Almighty Creator, it attaches itself to it as the only thought
which accounts to it for the world and for itself.

The Creator is, first of all, He whose glory the heavens declare, while
the earth makes known the work of His hands. He is the Mighty One and
the Wise, whose will has given being to nature, and who directs at once
the chorus of stars in the depths of the heavens, and the drop of vital
moisture in the herb which we tread under foot.

If, after having looked around, we turn our regard in upon ourselves, we
then discover other heavens, spiritual heavens, in which shine, like
stars of the first magnitude, those objects which cause the heart of man
to beat, so long as he is not self-degraded: truth, go