Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/356

348 Admit their maxims, and the universe returns to a frightful chaos; all things are thrown into disorder upon the earth; all the notions of virtue and vice are overthrown; the most inviolable laws of society are abolished: the discipline of morality is swept away; the government of states and empires ceases to be subject to any rule; the whole harmony of political institutions is dissolved; and the human race becomes an assemblage of madmen, barbarians, cheats, unnatural wretches who have no other laws but force, no other curb than their passions and the dread of authority, no other tie than irreligion and independence, no other gods than themselves. —.

The nurse of infidelity is sensuality. Youth are sensual. The Bible stands in their way. It prohibits the indulgence of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. —.

What ardently we wish, we soon believe. —.

There is not a single spot between Christianity and atheism, upon which a man can firmly fix his foot. —.

There is one single fact that one may oppose to all the wit and argument of infidelity; namely, that no man ever repented of being a Christian on his death-bed. —.

The infidelity that springs from the heart is not to be reached by a course of lectures on the evidences of Christianity; argument did not cause, and argument will not remove it. —.