Note (return) — Chapter III

The case of the Athenians has, therefore, a peculiar interest to every thoughtful mind. It confirms the belief that religion is a necessity to every human mind, a want of every human heart. 109 Without religion, the nature of man can never be properly developed; the noblest part of man--the divine, the spiritual element which dwells in man, as "the offspring of God"--must remain utterly dwarfed. The spirit, the personal being, the rational nature, is religious, and Atheism is the vain and the wicked attempt to be something less than man. If the spiritual nature of man has its normal and healthy development, he must become a worshipper. This is attested by the universal history of man. We look down the long-drawn aisles of antiquity, and everywhere we behold the smoking altar, the ascending incense, the prostrate form, the attitude of devotion. Athens, with her four thousand deities--Rome, with her crowded Pantheon of gods--Egypt, with her degrading superstitions--Hindostan, with her horrid and revolting rites--all attest that the religious principle is deeply seated in the nature of man. And we are sure religion can never be robbed of her supremacy, she can never be dethroned in the hearts of men. It were easier to satisfy the cravings of hunger by logical syllogisms, than to satisfy the yearnings of the human heart without religion. The attempt of Xerxes to bind the rushing floods of the Hellespont in chains was not more futile nor more impotent than the attempt of skepticism to repress the universal tendency to worship, so peculiar and so natural to man in every age and clime.