In the opinion of Epicurus and Lucretius, tranquillity of mind was the grand practical benefit of that unbelief which they sought to inculcate respecting the doctrine of Providence and Immortality.

They frequently affirmed that _fear_ generated superstition, and that superstition, in its turn, deepened and perpetuated the fear from which it sprung; that the minds of men must necessarily be overcast with anxiety and gloom as long as they continued to believe in a moral government and a future state; and that the only sovereign and effectual antidote to superstitious terror is the spirit of philosophical unbelief.

Similar views are perpetually repeated in the eloquent but declamatory pages of "The System of Nature." But the remedy proposed seems to be subject to grave suspicion, as one that may be utterly powerless, or at the best, exceedingly precarious; for, first of all, the fears which are supposed to have generated Religion must have been anterior to it, and must have arisen from some natural cause, which will continue to operate even after Religion has been disowned.

They spring, in fact, necessarily out of our present condition as dependent, responsible, and dying creatures; and they can neither be prevented nor cured by the mere negations of Atheism; we can only be raised above their depressing influence by a rational belief and well-grounded trust in the being and character of God.

Again, if the denial of a Providence and of a future state might serve, were it associated with a full assurance of certainty, to relieve us from _the fear_ of retribution hereafter, it must equally destroy _all hope_ of immortality, and reduce us to the dreary prospect of annihilation at death,--a prospect from which the soul of man instinctively recoils, and by which his whole life would be embittered just in proportion as he became more thoughtful and reflective.