Adams-"If I did not believe in a future state, I should believe in no God"

I believe in God and in his wisdom and benevolence, and I cannot conceive that such a Being could make such a species as the human merely to live and die on this earth. If I did not believe in a future state, I should believe in no God. This Universe, this all, this [totality] would appear with all its swelling pomp, a boyish firework.

John Adams, early 1800's, from a letter to Thomas Jefferson as quoted in "John Adams" by David McCullough, pages 625.