Read CHAPTER X of Atheism Among the People , free online book, by Alphonse de Lamartine, on ReadCentral.com.

But that People which forgets God, forgets itself. What right has it to be a People, if it have not its origin and hope in Him? How can the men of any nation expect tyrants to remember and respect its destiny, if they themselves debase this destiny to that of a machine with ten fingers, destined to weave the greatest possible number of yards of cloth in seventy years, to people as many hundred acres as possible with creatures as much to be pitied and as miserable as themselves, and to serve, from generation to generation, as human manure for the land, to fertilize the soil of their birth, their life, and their graves? How can the moral spiritualism of a People long resist such theories? Where can they find God in this workshop of matter?

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