entifying myself with the Church and
vindicating it--not of course denying the enormous mass of sin and
ignorance which exists of necessity in that world-wide multiform
communion--but going to the proof of this one point, that its system
is in no sense dishonest, and that therefore the upholders and
teachers of that system, as such, have a claim to be acquitted in
their own persons of that odious imputation.

Starting then with the being of a God (which, as I have said, is as
certain to me as the certainty of my own existence, though when I try
to put the grounds of that certainty into logical shape I find a
difficulty in doing so in mood and figure to my satisfaction), I look
out of myself into the world of men, and there I see a sight which
fills me with unspeakable distress. The world seems simply to give
the lie to that great truth, of which my whole being is so full; and
the effect upon me is, in consequence, as a matter of necessity, as
confusing as if it denied that I am in existence myself. If I looked
into a mirror, and did not see my face, I should have the sort of
feeling which actually comes upon me, when I look into this living
busy world, and see no reflexion of its Creator. This is, to me, one
of the great difficulties of this absolute primary truth, to which I
referred just now. Were it not for this voice, speaking so clearly in
my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist,
or a polytheist when I looked into the world. I am speaking for
myself only; and I am far from denying the real force of the
arguments in proof of a God, drawn from the general facts of human
society, but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take
away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold and the
leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice. The sight of the
world is nothing else than the prophet's scroll, full of
"lamentations, and mourning, and woe."

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history,
the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual
alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits,
governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless
courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent
conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken,
of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out
to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from
unreasoning