Is it yet too late for him to reconsider his opinions, and retrace his steps?
For his own sake, for the sake of those who are near and dear to him, for the sake of the multitudes who must be influenced, for good or evil, by his speeches and writings, let him lay to heart the solemn words of Sir Humphrey Davy;--"I envy no quality of mind or intellect in others,--not genius, power, wit, or fancy: but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should prefer _a firm religious belief_ to every other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hopes when all earthly hopes vanish, and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights, calling up the most delightful visions, where the sensualist and skeptic view only gloom, decay, and annihilation." "Attempt how vain,-- With things of earthly sort, with aught but God, With aught but moral excellence, truth, and love To satisfy and fill the immortal soul! To satisfy the ocean with a drop;-- To marry immortality to death; And with the unsubstantial Shade of Time To fill the embrace of all Eternity." THE END.
FOOTNOTES: [251] GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE, "Paley Refuted in his own Words," Third Edition.

London, 1850.

TOWNLEY AND HOLYOAKE, "A Public Discussion on the Being of a God," Third Thousand.

London, 1852.

GRANT AND HOLYOAKE, "Christianity and Secularism; a Public Discussion held on six successive Thursday evenings," Seventh Thousand.