Theism is a religion diffused through all religions; it is a metal which mixes itself with all the others, the veins of which extend under ground to the four corners of the world. This mine is more openly worked in China; everywhere else it is hidden, and the secret is only in the hands of the adepts.

There is no country where there are more of these adepts than in England. In the last century there were many atheists in that country, as well as in France and Italy. What the chancellor Bacon had said proved true to the letter, that a little philosophy makes a man an atheist, and that much philosophy leads to the knowledge of a God. When it was believed with Epicurus, that chance made everything, or with Aristotle, and even with several ancient theologians, that nothing was created but through corruption, and that by matter and motion alone the world goes on, then it was impossible to believe in a providence. But since nature has been looked into, which the ancients did not perceive at all; since it is observed that all is organized, that everything has its germ; since it is well known that a mushroom is the work of infinite wisdom, as well as all the worlds; then those who thought, adored in the countries where their ancestors had blasphemed. The physicians are become the heralds of providence; a catechist announces God to children, and a Newton demonstrates Him to the learned.

Many persons ask whether theism, considered abstractedly, and without any religious ceremony, is in fact a religion? The answer is easy: he who recognizes only a creating God, he who views in God only a Being infinitely powerful, and who sees in His creatures only wonderful machines, is not religious towards Him any more than a European, admiring the king of China, would thereby profess allegiance to that prince. But he who thinks that God has deigned to place a relation between Himself and mankind; that He has made him free, capable of good and evil; that He has given all of them that good sense which is the instinct of man, and on which the law of nature is founded; such a one undoubted............