which goes beyond the tomb, every look directed towards a world superior to our present destinies.  But take courage.  This flame lighted on the earth, and which is evermore directed towards heaven, has passed safely through rougher storms than those which now threaten it; it has shone brightly in thicker darkness than that in which men are laboring so hard to enshroud it.  It is not going to be extinguished, be very sure, before the affected indifference of a few wits of our day, and the haughty disdain of a few contemporary journalists.

In a word, Gentlemen,—­to take the idea of God as it has been handed down to us, and to study its relation to the reason, the heart, and the conscience of man,—­this is my proposed method of proceeding.  To show you that this idea is truth, because it satisfies the conscience, the heart, and the reason—­this is the object I have in view.  Of this object I am sure you feel the importance:  nevertheless, and that we may be more alive to it still, I propose to you to sound with me the abysses of sorrow and darkness which are involved in those terrible words—­“without God in the world.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[2] Aux grimpeurs des Alpes.

[3] Psalm cxxxix. 7-10.

[4] J.J.  Rousseau.

[5] Les Origines Indo-Europeennes, by Adolphe Pictet, ii. 651.

[6] Cleanthes, Hymn to Jupiter.

[7] Sophocles, OEdipus R.

[8] Handbuch der gesammten aegyptischen Alterthumskunde, von Dr. Max Uhlemann.  Leipzig, 1857.

[9] Institutions divines, ii. 1.

[10] Id.

[11] Deutsche Mythol. Third edition, page lxiv.

[12] Annales de philosophie chretienne, t. 59, p. 228._r_.

[13] Les Origines Indo-Europeennes, ii. 720.

[14] J’ai mon Dieu que je sers, vous servirez le votre.

[15]

                          Il faut craindre le mien;
     Lui seul est Dieu, Madame, et le votre n’est rien.

[16]

Leve, Jerusalem, leve ta tete altiere! 
Les peuples a l’envi marchent a ta lumiere.

[17] Etudes Orientales, par Adolphe Franck, p. 427.

[18] Barthelemy St. Hilaire, in the Seances et travaux de l’Academie des sciences morales et politiques, LXX., p. 134.

LECTURE II.

LIFE WITHOUT GOD.

(At Geneva, 20th Nov. 1863.—­At Lausanne, 13th Jan. 1864.)

GENTLEMEN,

I propose to examine to-day what are the consequences for human life of the total suppression of the idea of God.  This suppression is the result of atheism properly so called:  it is also the result of scepticism raised into a system.  The soul which doubts, but which seeks, regrets, hopes, is not wholly separated from God.  It gives Him a large share in its life, inasmuch as the desire which it feels to meet with Him, and the sadness which it experiences at not contemplating Him in a full light, become the principal facts of its existence.  But doubt adopted as a doctrine realizes in its own way, equally with atheism properly so called, life without God, the mournful subject of our present study.