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.

Having God, the spiritual life has a firm base and an invincible hope.
The vapors of earth may indeed for a moment obscure the sky. One while
fogs hang about the ground; another while clouds send forth the
thunder-bolt; but, above the regions of darkness and of tempest, the eye
of faith contemplates the eternal azure in its unchanging calm. Life has
its sorrows for all; but it is not only endurable, it is blessed, when
in view of the instability of all things, in view of evil, of injustice,
and of suffering, there can breathe from the depths of the soul to the
eternal, the Holy One, the Comforter, those words of patience in life
and of joy in death: _My God!_ Take God away, and life is decapitated.
Even this comparison is not sufficient; life, rather, becomes like to a
man who should have lost at once both his head and his heart. The
immense subject which opens before us falls into an easy and natural
division: we will fix our attention successively upon the individual and
upon society.




PART I.

_THE INDIVIDUAL._