that although he does not come in a visible form to teach us this thing
and that thing, yet we know that he desires our happiness; and to this
you might have added a thousand or ten thousand other things which we
know. If the reason he gave us to start with makes it unnecessary that
he should come to tell us in an audible voice that he desires our
happiness, it must also surely suffice to tell us which are lawful and
which unlawful of all the thoughts continually rising in our hearts.
That any one should question so evident and universally accepted a
truth, the foundation of all religion, seems very surprising to me. If
it had consisted with his plan to make these delicate mortal bodies
capable of every agreeable sensation in the highest degree, yet not
liable to accident, and not subject to misery and pain, he would surely
have done this for all of us. But reason and nature show us that such an
end did not consist with his plan; therefore to ask him to suspend the
operations of nature for the benefit of any individual sufferer, however
poignant and unmerited the sufferings may be, is to shut our eyes to the
only light he has given us. All our highest and sweetest feelings unite
with reason to tell us with one voice that he loves us; and our
knowledge of nature shows us plainly enough that he also loves all the
creatures inferior to man. To us he has given reason for a guide, and
for the guidance and protection of the lower kinds he has given
instinct: and though they do not know him, it would make us doubt his
impartial love for all his creatures, if we, by making use of our
reason, higher knowledge, and articulate speech, were able to call down
benefits on ourselves, and avert pain and disaster, while the dumb,
irrational brutes suffered in silence--the languishing deer that leaves
the herd with a festering thorn in its foot; the passage bird blown from
its course to perish miserably far out at sea."

His conclusions were perhaps more logical than mine; nevertheless,