I perceived that these ministers of the gospel eschewed all parties with the anxiety attendant upon personal interest.
These facts convinced me that what I had been told was true; and it then became my object to investigate their causes, and to inquire how it happened that the real authority of religion was increased by a state of things which diminished its apparent force: these causes did not long escape my researches.
The short space of threescore years can never content the imagination of man; nor can the imperfect joys of this world satisfy his heart.

Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt of existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation.

These different feelings incessantly urge his soul to the contemplation of a future state, and religion directs his musings thither.

Religion, then, is simply another form of hope; and it is no less natural to the human heart than hope itself.

Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect, and a sort of violent distortion of their true natures; but they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments; for unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.