timid and credulous persons. But only see
how he uses the world, and plays his scheme, and foils his adversary and
twists and bends his plastic morality, all because he is not troubled
with scruples, and has no faith in God or duty!

And yet, to the serious eye, that scans his spiritual mood, and looks
all around his shrewd, self-confident position, there is a great moral
in the skeptic's life. It teaches us, more than ever, the value of
faith, and the glory of religion. That flat negation only makes the
rejected truth more positive. The specimen of what existence is without
God in the world, causes us to yearn more earnestly for the shelter
of His presence, and the blessedness of His control. From the dark
perspective of the skeptic's sensual view, the bleak annihilation that
bounds all his hopes, we turn more gladly to the auroral promise of
immortality, to the consolations and influences of a life beyond the
grave. Yes, in that tale that is told, in that skeptic history, there
is indeed a great moral. It shows how meaningless and how mean, how
treacherous and false, is that man's life who hangs upon the balance
of a cunning egotism, and moves only from the impulses of selfish
desire-without religion, without virtue, repudiating the idea of
morality, and practically living without God.

Or, on the other hand, suppose we call up the image of one who has well
kept the trusts of family, and kindred, and friendship;--one who has
made home a pleasant place; who has filled it with the sanctities
of affection, and adorned it with a graceful and generous
hospitality;--before whose cheerful temper the perplexities of business
have been smoothed, and whose genial disposition has melted even the
stern and selfish;--who, thus rendering life around her happier and
better, attracting more closely the hearts of relatives, and making
every acquaintance a friend, has, chief of all, beautifully discharged
the sacred offices of wife and mother; encountering the day of adversity
with a noble self-devotion, enriching the hour of prosperity with wise
counsel and faithful love; unwearied in the time of sickness, patient
and trustful beneath the dispensation of affliction; in short, by
her many virtues and graces evidently the bright centre of a happy
household. And now suppose that, with all these associations clinging
to her, in the bloom of life, with opportunities for usefulness and
enjoyment opening all around her, death interferes, a