ll God, and
that his inheritance shall be ours. They strike out accordingly the
theistic beliefs in question, and then turn instantly to life: they sort
its resources, count its treasures, and then say, '_Aim at this, and
this, and this. See how beautiful is holiness; see how rapturous is
pleasure. Surely these are worth seeking for their own sakes, without
any "reward or punishment looming in the future."_' They find, in fact,
the interests and the sentiments of the world's present life--all the
glow and all the gloom of it--lying before them like the colours on a
painter's palette, and think they have nothing to do but set to work and
use them. But let them wait a moment; they are in far too great a hurry.
The palette and its colours are not nearly ready for them.

One of the colours of life--religion, that is--a colour which, by their
own admission, has been hitherto an important one, they have swept clean
away. They have swept it clean away, and let them remember why they have
done so. It may be a pleasing colour, or it may not: that is a matter of
taste. But the reason why it is to be got rid of is that it is not a
fast colour. It is found to fade instantly in the spreading sunlight of
knowledge. It is rapidly getting dim and dull and dead. When once it is
gone, we shall never be able to restore it, and our future pictures of
life must be tinted without its aid. They therefore profess loudly that
they will employ it no longer.

But there is this point, this all-important point, that quite escapes
them. They sweep the colour, in its pure state, clean off the palette;
and then profess to show us by experiment that they can get on perfectly
well without it. But they never seem to suspect that it may be mixed up
with the colours they retain, and be the secret of their depth and
lustre. Let them see whether religion be not lurking there, as a subtle
colouring principle in all their pigments, even a grain of it producing
effects that else were quite impossible. Let them only begin this
analysis, and it will very soon be clear to them that to cleanse life of
religion is not so simple a process as they seem to fancy it. Its actual
dogmas may be readily put away from us; not so the effect which these
dogmas have worked during the course of centuries. In disguised forms
they are around us everywhere; they confront us in every human interest,
in every human pleasure. They have beaten themselves into life; they
have eaten the