It is questionable, how far they could lay claim to be the real friends of humanity, who would reason away this last, best solace of human wretchedness, even were it proved an illusion. But man is just as certainly and necessarily a religious being, as he is a being constituted with appetites and passions. Grant, that there are people, who seem wholly destitute of the religious sentiment. Such are the real Atheists from internal conviction; for observe, there are many, who assume to be such, to pass for free and independent thinkers, and who are most likely, in their dying moments, to require absolution and extreme unction. But if there are men thus monstrously constituted, so are there individuals apparently as destitute of the common appetites and passions. We take no account of such exceptions, in indicating a general rule; and say, that man is constituted a religious being, and possessed of certain appetites and passions; although there may be selected a few individuals, who seem entirely without either.
Religion is the key stone of the arch of the moral universe. It is the fountain of endearing friendship; and on it are founded those sublime relations, which exist between the visible and the invisible world; those, who still sojourn here, and those who have become citizens of the country beyond us. It is the poesy of existence, the basis of all high thought and virtuous feeling; of charities and morals; and the very tie of social existence. Let no person claim to be good, while laying an unhallowed hand upon this ark of the covenant of the Eternal with the children of sorrow and death.
Treatises upon the evidences of religion may be useful for theological students; and I have heard people affirm, that they have been rescued by such works from the gloom of unbelief. But, believing, as I do, that we were constituted religious animals, if such a term may be admitted, and that the religious sentiment is a part of our organization, I have quite as much confidence in the arguments of the heart, as of the head. I undertake not to pronounce, whether M. de Chateaubriand were a good christian, or not. But I affirm, that I have nowhere seen my own views of the process, by which the original endowment of the religious sentiment is called into action, so eloquently described, as in the following extract from that writer.
‘My mother, after being thrown, at the age of seventy-two years, into a dungeon, where she saw a part of her children perish, expired at last upon a couch of straw, to which her miseries had consigned her. The remembrance of my errors infused great bitterness into her last days. In death she charged one of my sisters to recall me to that religion, in which I had been reared. My sister transmitted me the last wish of my mother. When this letter reached me beyond the seas, my sister herself was no more. She had died from the consequences of her imprisonment. These two voices, proceeding from the tomb, this death, which served as the interpreter of the dead, deeply struck me. I did not yield, I admit, to great supernatural lights. My conviction proceeded from the heart. I wept, and I believed.’
The belief naturally originated by the sentiment of religion, or what may be called the faith of the heart, is presented in the last fruitless attempt of the old man, to cheer the despair of Paul in the exquisite tale of Paul and Virginia. ‘And why deplore the fate of Virginia? Virginia still exists. There is, be assured, a region, in which virtue receives its reward. Virginia now is happy. Oh! if from the abode of angels, she could tell you, as she did, when she bade you farewell, “O Paul, life is but a trial. I was faithful to the laws of nature, love and virtue. Heaven found I had fulfilled my duties, and snatched me forever from all the miseries, I might have endured myself; and all, I might have felt for the miseries of others. I am placed above the reach of all human evils, and you pity me! I am become pure and unchangeable, as a particle of light, and you would recall me to the darkness of human life. O Paul! O my beloved friend! Recollect those days of happiness, when in the morning we felt the delightful sensations excited by the unfolding beauties of nature; when we gazed upon the sun, gilding the peaks of those rocks; and then spreading his rays over the bosom of the forests. How exquisite were our emotions, while we enjoyed the glowing colors of the opening day, the odors of our shrubs, the concerts of our birds! Now at the source of beauty, from which flows all that is delightful on earth, my soul intuitively sees, tastes, hears, touches, what before she could only be made sensible of through the medium of our weak organs. Oh! what language can describe, those shores of eternal bliss, which I inhabit forever! All, that infinite power and celestial bounty can confer, that harmony, which results from friendship with numberless beings, exulting in the same felicity, we enjoy in unmixed perfection. Support, then, the trial which is allotted you, that you may heighten the happiness of your Virginia, by love, which will know no termination, by hymeneals, which will be immortal. There I will calm your regrets; I will wipe away your tears. Raise your thoughts towards infinite duration, and bear the evils of a moment.”’