During this period I married again:  your tender age, and the care you required, which my business and absence prevented my giving you, were the motives which induced me to take this step.  God in his fatherly kindness mercifully directed my choice, though I had never thought of asking him to do so; and you have found a second mother in her who has ever been to me the most estimable and best of friends.  During this period also, I thought more of religion than ever before.  Though I had read the Gospel only to satisfy my curiosity on the three points of doctrine that I have mentioned, and although my attention had been exclusively directed to these points, it is probable, notwithstanding, that I had almost unconsciously imbibed some of the impressions which the word of God is calculated to produce, and that even then I was in some measure under its secret influence.  One thing I am sure of, that from that time some idea of religion, although then comparatively vague and confused, never left me; I frequently caught myself musing on the origin of the universe, on the vicissitudes of nature, and on the future condition of those numerous beings, who are seen for a short time on the earth and then disappear.  My own destiny, also, frequently engaged my thoughts.  But I was far from referring it to Him, on whom I now see that it entirely depends.  In all these thoughts God was excluded from the place he ought to have held.  With nothing but false and uncertain notions of him, I was far indeed from regarding him as the vivifying principle, which, to the eye of the Christian, animates and embellishes every thing, and as that pure light “which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

I am bound to tell you, my children, what was the real state of my soul at that time.  I was in so deplorable a condition of blindness and ignorance, that sometimes I thought there was no God, but that he was an imaginary being; and sometimes confounding him with the works of his almighty hands, I attributed divinity to the material world.  “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,” and I dare not deny that these words of David were for a long time, and even perhaps at the period of which I am speaking, applicable to me.  But while I acknowledge that the natural corruption of my heart, and the bad books I had read, were in part the causes of the sad state I have described, I cannot help also attributing the greatest part of them to the abuses, the superstition, and the errors which disfigure Christianity in the Romish church, and which had so disgusted me that they had driven me into total infidelity.

Such, then, being in fact my religious state, you may well believe, my children, that I was not happy; for it is impossible to be so without trusting in God, who is the source of supreme good and true peace.  I was assiduous in my occupation; I frequented the society of my friends; but, my heart empty and incessantly craving after something which I could not obtain, was never content.  My mind, restless and agitated, could no where find an object to fix and satisfy it.  Listlessness followed me every where, and seemed to increase upon me.  O how unhappy, and how pitiable are those, who are, as was then, without God, without Christ, without hope in the world!