’If I am asked for proofs of the “conversion” of this people, I should say, “Conversion from what to what?” and then I should say, “Ask any close observer in England about the commercial and social morality existing in not only the most ignorant ranks of society:  how much is merely formal, and therefore, perhaps, actually detrimental to a true spirit of religion!  Here you don’t find much that you associate with religion in England, in the external observances of it; but there are not a few ignorant people (I am not speaking of our trained scholars) who are giving up their old habits, adopting new ways, accepting a stricter mode of life, foregoing advantages of one kind and another, because they believe that this “Good news,” this Gospel, is true, and because the simple truths of Christianity are, thank God, finding some entrance into their hearts.

’I dread the imposition from without of some formal compliances with the externals of religion while I know that the meaning and spirit of them cannot as yet be understood.  Can there be conceived anything more formal, more mischievous, than inculcating a rigid Sabbatarian view of the Lord’s Day upon a people who don’t know anything about the Cross and the Resurrection?  Time enough to talk about the observance when the people have some knowledge of the vital living truth of a spiritual religion.

’So about clothing.  If I tried to do it, I think I could make the people here buy, certainly accept, and wear, clothing.  With what result at present?  That they would think that wearing a yard of unbleached calico was a real evidence of the reception of the new teaching.

’Such things are, in this stage of Mission work, actually hurtful.  The mind naturally takes in and accepts the easy outward form, and by such treatment you actually encourage it to do so, and to save itself the trouble of thinking out the real meaning and teaching which must of course be addressed to the spirit.

’These outward things all follow as a matter of course after a time, as consequences of the new power and light felt in the soul; but they may be so spoken of as to become substitutes for the true spiritual life, and train up a people in hypocrisy.

’I beg your pardon really for parading all these truisms.  Throw it in the fire.

’I don’t for a moment mean or think that religion is to be taught by mere prudence and common sense.  But a spiritual religion is imperilled the moment that you insist upon an unspiritual people observing outward forms which are to them the essence of the new teaching.  Anything better than turning heathens into Pharisees!  What did our Lord call the proselytes of the Pharisee and the Scribe?

’And while I see and love the beauty of the outward form when it is known and felt to be no more than the shrine of the inward spiritual power; while I know that for highly advanced Christians, or for persons trained in accurate habits of thought, all that beauty of holiness is needful; yet I think I see that the Divine wisdom of the Gospel would guard the teacher against presenting the formal side of religion to the untaught and ignorant convert.  “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth,” is the great lesson for the heathen mind chained down as it is to things of sense.