Tears May Soothe The Wounds They Cannot

I Have As Little Superstition In Me As Any Man Living, But My Secret Opinion Has Ever Been, And Still Is, That God Almighty Will Not Give Up A People To Military Destruction, Or Leave Them Unsupportedly To Perish, Who Have So Earnestly And So Repeatedly Sought To Avoid The Calamities Of War, By Every Decent Method Which Wisdom Could Invent. Neither Have I So Much Of The Infidel In Me, As To Suppose That He Has Relinquished The Government Of The World, And Given Us Up To The Care Of Devils.

As To The Christian System Of Faith, It Appears To Me As A Species Of Atheism — A Sort Of Religious Denial Of God. It Professes To Believe In A Man Rather Than In God. It Is A Compound Made Up Chiefly Of Manism With But Little Deism, And Is As Near To Atheism As Twilight Is To Darkness. It Introduces Between Man And His Maker An Opaque Body, Which It Calls A Redeemer, As The Moon Introduces Her Opaque Self Between The Earth And The Sun, And It Produces By This Means A Religious, Or An Irreligious, Eclipse Of Light. It Has Put The Whole Orbit Of Reason Into Shade.

Before Anything Can Be Reasoned Upon To A Conclusion, Certain Facts, Principles, Or Data, To Reason From, Must Be Established, Admitted, Or Denied.

Reason And Ignorance, The Opposites Of Each Other, Influence The Great Bulk Of Mankind. If Either Of These Can Be Rendered Sufficiently Extensive In A Country, The Machinery Of Government Goes Easily On. Reason Obeys Itself; And Ignorance Submits To Whatever Is Dictated To It.

The Duty Of Man Is Not A Wilderness Of Turnpike Gates, Through Which He Is To Pass By Tickets From One To The Other. It Is Plain And Simple, And Consists But Of Two Points--his Duty God, Which Every Man Must Feel; And, With Respect To His Neighbor, To Do As He Would Be Done By.