ray as you
may. Prayer may move a man like yourself; but it cannot move God." And I
hearkened to the seeming reason, and gave up prayer. My heart said,
"There is a personal, conscious, all-perfect God." My head, or my
infidel philosophy said, "There cannot be such a God. A God all-powerful
could prevent evil. A God all-good _would_ prevent it. God cannot
therefore be a conscious, personal, all-perfect being. He must be a
blind, unconscious power; the sum total of natural tendencies, working
according to the eternal properties of things, without the possibility
of change; and hence the existence of evil, and the prevalence of
eternal, unalterable law." And here again my head was permitted to
prevail, and my heart, in spite of all its remonstrances, was compelled
to give way. And with a personal, conscious, all-perfect God, went the
richest treasures of the human heart,--trust in a Fatherly Providence;
the hope of a blessed immortality, and faith in the ultimate triumph of
truth and justice, and all assurance of human progress and a good time
coming.

Yet I was obliged, in spite of the false philosophical principle I had
adopted, to accept the oracles of my heart on many points, and to reject
the logic of my head. My heart said, "Speak the truth; to lie is wrong."
But now that it had got rid of a personal God, logic said, "There can be
nothing wrong in a lie that hurts no one. There is something commendable
in a useful, serviceable lie. To lie to save a person from danger or
destruction is a virtue. The feeling which shrinks from such a lie is a
blind, irrational prejudice, and should be plucked up and cast out of
the soul. Truth may be proper enough in the _strong_: but _deceit_ is
the wisdom of the _weak_." But in this case my heart, my instinctive
love of truth, prevailed.

Again, my heart pleaded for justice and mercy; for _justice_ to all; and
for _mercy_ to the needy and helpless. But reason, or the heartless and
godless philosophy that usurped its name, said, "Utility is the supreme
law; the only law of man. Justice and mercy are right when they are
useful; but when they are hurtful they are right no longer. If by
destroying the helpless and the needy we can deliver them from their
misery, and increase the happiness of the rest of our race, their
destruction is a virtue, especially if we dispose of them in a quiet and
painless way, so as to spare them the fears and agonies of death!" But
here again my heart preva