naturally flows out into friendship and benevolence towards the person
who has so kindly an effect upon it.

6. When I consider this cheerful stale of mind in its third relation, I
cannot but look upon it as a constant habitual gratitude to the great
Author of Nature. An inward cheerfulness is an implicit praise and
thanksgiving to Providence under all its dispensations. It is a kind of
acquiescence in the state wherein we are placed, and a secret
approbation of the Divine will in his conduct towards man.

7. There are but two things which, in my opinion, can reasonably deprive
us of this cheerfulness of heart. The first of these is the sense of
guilt. A man who lives in a state of vice and impenitence, can have no
title to that evenness and tranquility of mind which is the health of
the soul, and the natural effect of virtue and innocence. Cheerfulness
in an ill man, deserves a harder name than language can furnish us
with, and is many degrees beyond what we commonly call folly or madness.

8. Atheism, by which I mean a disbelief of a Supreme Being, and
consequently of a future state, under whatsoever title it shelters
itself, may likewise very reasonably deprive a man of this cheerfulness
of temper. There is something so particularly gloomy and offensive to
human nature in the prospect of non-existence, that I cannot but wonder,
with many excellent writers, how it is possible for a man to out-live
the expectation of it. For my own part, I think the being of a God is so
little to be doubted, that it is almost the only truth we are sure of,
and such a truth as we meet with in every object, in every occurrence,
and in every thought.

9. If we look into the characters of this tribe of infidels, we