The North Carolina Standard

BEAUTIFUL APPEAL TO AN ATHEIST.

I cannot believe that a mind like yours, can walk abroad through this beautiful world, beneath its glorious canopy of light, and not feel, and sometimes tremble, at those evidences of Almighty being and agency, that flame from the sun, sparkle in the stars, echo in the thunder, breathe in the winds, murmur in the waters, exhale from the flowers, and warble from the groves. And I am sure that sometimes in your hours of depression and sorrow, your desolate spirits sigh for brighter hopes and surer foundations than any on which you can now repose. You are beginning to take the downward path of life: the high-day of youth and enterprise is past; you have tasted about all that this world has to give; death has again invaded your domestic circle, and every year as age approaches, one star after another will drop from your sky.

To the Christian, surrounded by the sharers of his hopes, these loved and parting lights of life glide away to await his arrival in a purer sphere; to you they are sinking to blackness of darkness forever. And as each year your passage to the tomb becomes more desolate and dim, no glimmer of hope arises to cheer, but all around is darkness, silence, and interminable gloom.