conception of the almighty and just God is the impression which
determines duty and guarantees its value.

When the necessary alliance of moral order with religious thought is
denied, the reality of conscience is opposed to what are called
theological hypotheses always open to discussion. It is seen well enough
that men may doubt of God, but it is supposed to be impossible to doubt
of conscience. This is an illusion of generous minds. Those who would
keep this illusion must not open the pages of the history of philosophy
where the negation of duty does not occupy less space than the negation
of God; they must not cast their eyes too much about them; they must
also take care not to open the most widely circulated books, and the
most fashionable periodicals: otherwise, as we shall see, they would not
be long in finding out that this morality which they would fain have
superior to all attacks, is perhaps what of all things is most attacked
now-a-days, and that that conscience which it is impossible to deny is
in fact the object of denials the most audacious on the part of a few of
the present favorites of fame. The voice of duty is heard no doubt even
when God does not come distinctly into mind; but when the questions are
clearly put, if God is denied, conscience grows dim, and comes at last
to be extinguished. This obscuration does not take place all at once:
the potter's wheel goes on turning for a while, says an old Hindoo poem,
after that the foot of the artisan is withdrawn from it. But the
darkening takes place gradually with time: such at least is the general
rule. There are exceptional men who seem to escape this law, and to bear
in their bosom a God veiled from their own consciousness. Such men may
be found, and even in considerable numbers, in a time like ours, when
doubt is, in many cases, a prejudice which current opinion deposits on
the surface of minds without penetrating them deeply. There are men all
whose convictions have fallen into ruins, while their conscience