religious sect, by conduct which he would be ashamed to employ in private life;—­if I am asked why the middle classes (and the high religious professors among them, just as much as any) are given over to cheating, coveting, puffing their own goods by shameless and unmanly boasting, undermining each other by the dirtiest means, while the sons of religious professors, both among the higher and the middle classes, seem just as liable as any other young men to fall into unmanly profligacy;—­if I am asked why the poor profess God’s gospel and practise the Devil’s works; and why, in this very parish now, there are women who, while they are drunkards, swearers, and adulteresses, will run anywhere to hear a sermon, and like nothing better, saving sin, than high-flown religious books;—­if I am asked, I say, why the old English honesty which used to be our glory and our strength, has decayed so much of late years, and a hideous and shameful hypocrisy has taken the place of it, I can only answer by pointing to the good old Church Catechism, and what it says about our duty to God and to our neighbour, and declaring boldly, ’It is because you have forgotten that.  Because you have despised that.  Because you have fancied that it was beneath you to keep God’s plain human commandments.  You have been wanting to “save your souls,” while you did not care whether your souls were saved alive, or whether they were dead, and rotten, and damned within you; you have dreamed that you could be what you called “spiritual,” while you were the slaves of sin; you have dreamed that you could become what you call “saints,” while you were not yet even decent men and women.’

And so all this superstition has had the same effect as the false preaching in Ezekiel’s time had.  It has strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not turn from his wicked way, by promising him life; and it has made the heart of the righteous sad, whom God has not made sad.  Plain, respectable, God-fearing men and women, who have wished simply to do their duty where God has put them, have been told that they are still unconverted, still carnal—­ that they have no share in Christ—­that God’s Spirit is not with them—­that they are in the way to endless torture:  till they have been ready one minute to say, ’Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die’—­’Surely I have cleansed my hands in vain, and washed my heart in innocency;’ and the next minute to say, with Job, angrily, ’Though I die, thou shalt not take my righteousness from me!  You preachers may call me what names you will; but I know that I love what is right, and wish to do my duty;’ and so they have been made perplexed and unhappy, one day fancying themselves worse than they really were, and the next fancying themselves better than they really were; and by both tempers of mind tempted to disbelieve God’s Gospel, and throw away the thought of vital religion in disgust.