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32 suffers himself to depart from the great lights which, let down from heaven, have hitherto guided the world, and following the "will o' wisp" glimmerings of his own imagination, he wanders away and away from the beaten path, till he becomes lost amid the quagmires and morasses of thought, and dark forests of phantasies which shut out the light of heaven:—then it is,—by one or another of these courses,—that the heavenly flame, which warmed and enlightened the childish mind, becomes extinguished. As the heart becomes hardened, the mind is darkened. In proportion as sensuality or worldliness or ambition takes possession of the soul, that innocence of childhood, which was the abode of God and angels, perishes; and then, those heavenly beings having no abiding place with that man, he has no longer a perception of their existence. To him they are not. And then, when he looks with his eyes upon the outer world and the grand appearances and motions of the natural universe,—having no inward key by which to interpret those appearances,—having broken in himself that chain by which earth and heaven are joined,—having extinguished that light of life, by which God is seen present in and pervading His universe,—he beholds only dead matter, he sees nothing within or above the dull clod he treads upon: having destroyed the image of God in his own soul,— that universe, which to the spiritual mind everywhere mirrors its Divine Creator, to him reflects no Form, no Countenance of love; it is dark and dead, because the mind that beholds it, is so. Such is the origin of all confirmed atheism: it springs, not so much from an erring head, as from an evil heart.