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presumptuously placed on his throne. For if the Almighty. who regulates the world, were not just and good, who could esteem him? What good being but must hate him? Who could have the hope of pleasing him? Might not man, however honest and upright, suffer his indignation? If such were the Creator and Governor of the world nothing could remain but absolute uncertainty of happiness, anxious suspense, distraction of thought and apprehensions full of terror. And in this state (if it were possible) even the best of human beings might prefer Atheism itself. For it is better to believe that there is no God at all, than to have such a God as this. But though the absence of such an unnatural and evil deity might be no loss to the creation; yet the want of the true God, the Father of all the wise and the good, the director and governor of nature must be a dreadful calamity to the whole universe. No human mind could conceive the whole measure and depth of that disaster which would result from there being no God in the world.
The Atheist I know expects to lose his conscious being, to be as if he had never been; to see no other sun, when this has set on him : and no other scene of action, when this vain life is over. But he has no right, even on his own principles of fate or chance, to hope for this issue. For if fate has given him his existence here, and opened a scene of mingled sorrows and joys: what should hinder, that this same fate should destine for him another kind of life—another sphere of activity, and other calamities, for ever? What has then the Atheist to look for? An eternity, perhaps, if
