ain
mischief of it is, that it leaves the greater number of men without the
natural food which God intended for their intellects. For one man who is
fitted for the study of words, fifty are fitted for the study of things,
and were intended to have a perpetual, simple, and religious delight in
watching the processes, or admiring the creatures, of the natural
universe. Deprived of this source of pleasure, nothing is left to them
but ambition or dissipation; and the vices of the upper classes of
Europe are, I believe, chiefly to be attributed to this single cause.

Secondly: It despises Religion.--I do not say it despises "Theology,"
that is to say, _Talk_ about God. But it despises "Religion;" that is to
say, the "binding" or training to God's service. There is much talk and
much teaching in all our academies, of which the effect is not to bind,
but to loosen, the elements of religious faith. Of the ten or twelve
young men who, at Oxford, were my especial friends, who sat with me
under the same lectures on Divinity, or were punished with me for
missing lecture by being sent to evening prayers,[63] four are now
zealous Romanists,--a large average out of twelve; and while thus our
own universities profess to teach Protestantism, and do not, the
universities on the Continent profess to teach Romanism, and do
not,--sending forth only rebels and infidels. During long residence on
the Continent, I do not remember meeting with above two or three young
men, who either believed in revelation, or had the grace to hesitate in
the assertion of their infidelity.

Whence, it seems to me, we may gather one of two things; either that
there is nothing in any European form of religion so reasonable or
ascertained, as that it can be taught securely to our youth, or fastened
in their minds by any rivets of proof which they shall not be able to
loosen the moment they begin to think; or else, that no means are taken
to train them in such demonstrable creeds.

It seems to me the duty of a rational nation to ascertain (and to be at
some pains in the matter) which of these suppositions is true; and, if
indeed no proof can be given of any supernatural fact, or Divine
doctrine, stronger than a youth just out of his teens can overthrow in
the first stirrings of serious thought, to confess this boldly; to get
rid of the expense of an Establishment, and the hypocrisy of a Liturgy;
to exhibit its cathedrals as curious memorials of a by-gone
supersti