irremediable doubt. Then men come to ask themselves if all be not a lie;
and they speak of the universal vanity, without making the reserve of
Ecclesiastes.[23] There are more souls ill of this malady than are
supposed to be so. Many begin by setting up proudly against God what
they call the rights of reason, and by and by we see this reason, which
has revolted against its Principle, vacillate, doubt of itself, and at
last, losing itself in a bitter irony, wrap itself, with all beside, in
the shroud of a universal scorn.

Without God reason is extinguished. What, in like case, will happen to
the conscience? The conscience is a reality. I will say willingly in the
style of the prophets: Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ere
I deny conscience, and disparage the sacred name of duty! Yes,
conscience is a reality; but God is in it: He it is who gives to it its
necessary basis and its indispensable support. The conscience is the
august voice of the Master of the universe. God has given us the light
of the understanding that we may see and comprehend some portions of the
works which He has created without us: a work there is for which He
would have us to be fellow-workers with Him. The heaven of stars is a
spectacle for the eyes of the body, a grander spectacle still for the
contemplation of the mind which has understood their wondrous mechanism.
We admire them; but if the stars failed to attract our admiration, no
one of them on that account would cease to trace its orbit. There is
another heaven, a heaven of loving stars and free, the sight of which is
one day to fill us with rapture, and the realization of which is to be
the work of our love and of our will. Before we contemplate it we must
make it; this is our high and awful privilege. The plan of the spiritual
heavens is deposited in the soul, and the utterances of the conscience
reveal it to the will. It is a law of justice and of love. This law is
evermore violated, because it is proposed to liberty, and liberty