I envy no quality of mind or intellect in others, said Sir Humphrey Davy—not genius, power, wit or fancy; but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hopes when all earthly hopes vanish, and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity; makes an instrument of torture and shame the ladder of ascent to paradise; and, far above all combination of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions, palms and amaranths, the gardens of the blessed, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the sceptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation.