"It is useless to tell me not to reason, but to believe. You might as well tell a man not to wake, but sleep. And then to bully with torments, and all that! I cannot help thinking that the menace of hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.
"Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of good in his main-spring of mind. But, God help us all! it is at present a sad jar of atoms.
"Matter is eternal, always changing, but reproduced, and, as far as we can comprehend eternity, eternal; and why not mind? Why should not the mind act with and upon the universe, as portions of it act upon, and with, the congregated dust called mankind? See how one man acts upon himself and others, or upon multitudes! The same agency, in a higher and purer degree, may act upon the stars, &c. ad infinitum.
"I have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy, but could never bear its introduction into Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded upon the soul. For this reason Priestley's Christian Materialism always struck me as deadly. Believe the resurrection of the body, if you will, but not without a soul. The deuce is in it, if after having had a soul, (as surely the mind, or whatever you call it, is,) in this world, we must part with it in the next, even for an immortal materiality! I own my partiality for spirit.
"I am always most religious upon a sunshiny day, as if there was some association between an internal approach to greater light and purity and the kindler of this dark lantern of our external existence.