The Massachusetts Spy, And Worcester County Advertiser

Consequences of Atheism. Few men
suspect, perhaps no man comprehends, the
extent of the supports given by religion to
every virtue. No man perhaps is aware,
how much our moral and social sentiments
are led from this fountain: how powerless
conscience would become without the belief
of God; how palsied would be human benevolence,
to quicken and sustain it; how suddenly the whole
social fabric would quake
and with what a fearful crash it would sink
into hopeless ruin, were the ideas of a supreme
Being, of accountability, and of a
future life to be utterly erased from every
mind. Once let men believe thoroughly
that they are the work and sport of chance;
that no superior intelligence concerns itself
with human affairs; that all their improvements
perish for ever at death; that the
weak have no guardian, and the injured no
avenger; that there is no recompence for
sacrifices to uprightness and the public
good; that no oath is heard in Heaven;
that secret crimes have no witness but the
perpetrator; that human existence has no
purpose, and death is total, everlasting extinction—once let them thoroughly abandon
religion. and who can conceive or describe
the extent of the desolation which would
follow.

We hope, perhaps, that human laws and
natural sympathy would hold society together.
As reasonably might we believe,
that, were the sun quenched in the heavens,
our torches would illuminate, and our fires
quicken and fertilize creation. What is
there in human nature to awaken respect
and tenderness, if man is the unprotected
insect of a day? and what is he more, if
Atheism be true?—Erase all thought and
fear of God from a community, and selfishness
and sensuality would absolve the whole
man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, and
poverty and suffering, having no solace or
hope, would trample in scorn on the restraint
of human laws. Virtue, duty, principle,
would be mocked and spurned as
unmeaning sounds. A sordid self-interest
would supplant every other feeling, and
man would become in fact what the theory
of Atheism declares him to be, a companion
for brutes.