aid: _I know but two beautiful
things in the universe: the starry sky above our heads, and the
sentiment of duty in our hearts_. In truth all the wonders of the
creation are comprised in these words.

"So far from a simple and severe religion searing our hearts, I should
have thought, before I had known you, Corinne, that it was the only one
which could concentrate and perpetuate the affections. I have seen the
most pure and austere conduct unfold in a man the most inexhaustible
tenderness. I have seen him preserve even to old age, a virginity of
soul, which the passions and their criminal effects would necessarily
have withered. Undoubtedly repentance is a fine thing, and I have more
need than any person to believe in its efficacy; but repeated repentance
fatigues the soul--this sentiment can only regenerate once. It is the
redemption which is accomplished at the bottom of our soul, and this
great sacrifice cannot be renewed. When human weakness is accustomed to
it, the power to love is lost; for power is necessary in order to love,
at least with constancy.

"I shall offer some objections of the same kind to that splendid form of
worship, which according to you, acts so powerfully upon the
imagination. I believe the imagination to be modest, and retired as the
heart. The emotions which are imposed on it, are less powerful than
those born of itself. I have seen in the Cevennes, a Protestant minister
who preached towards the evening in the heart of the mountains. He
invoked the tombs of the French, banished and proscribed by their
brethren, whose ashes had been assembled together in this spot. He
promised their friends that they should meet them again in a better
world. He said that a virtuous life secured us this happiness; he said:
_do good to mankind, that God may heal in your heart the wound of
grief_. He testified his astonishment at the inflexibility and
hard-heartedness of man, the creature of a day, to his fellow man
equally with himself the creature of a day, and seized upon that
terrible idea of death, which the living have conceived, but which they
will never be able to exhaust. In short, he said nothing that was not
affecting and true: his words were perfectly in harmony with nature. The
torrent which was heard in the distance, the scintillating light of the
stars, seemed to express the same thought under another form. The
magnificence of nature was there, that magnificence, which can feast the
soul without