Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences. Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason. Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other. Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them. Habit is the second nature which destroys the first. Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us. How can people hold these opinions? What joy can we find in the expectation of nothing but hopeless misery? What reason for boasting that we are in impenetrable darkness? And how can it happen that the following argument occurs to a reasonable man? How hollow and full of ribaldry is the heart of man! I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter. If we would say that man is too insignificant to deserve communion with God, we must indeed be very great to judge of it. | 
