es become liable to the awful charge which is denounced
against him who is ashamed of his Christian profession."

"Men of the world," said Sir John, "are extremely jealous of whatever
may be thought _particular_; they are frightened at every thing that has
not the sanction of public opinion, and the stamp of public applause.
They are impatient of the slightest suspicion of censure in what may be
supposed to affect the credit of their judgment, though often
indifferent enough as to any blame that may attach to their conduct.
They have been accustomed to consider strict religion as a thing which
militates against good taste, and to connect the idea of something
unclassical and inelegant, something awkward and unpopular, something
uncouth and ill-bred, with the peculiar doctrines of Christianity;
doctrines which, though there is no harm in believing, they think there
can be no good in avowing."

"It is a little hard," said Mr. Stanley, "that men of piety, who are
allowed to possess good sense on all other occasions, and whose judgment
is respected in all the ordinary concerns of life, should not have a
little credit given them in matters of religion, but that they should be
at once transformed into idiots or madmen in that very point which
affords the noblest exercise to the human faculties."

"A Christian, then," said I, "if human applause be his idol is of all
men most miserable. He forfeits his reputation every way. He is accused
by the men of the world of going too far; by the enthusiast of not going
far enough. While it is one of the best evidences of his being right,
that he is rejected by one party for excess, and by the other for
deficiency."

"What then is to be done?" said Dr. Barlow. "Must a discreet and pious
man give up a principle because it has been disfigured by the fanatic,
or abused by the hypocrite, or denied by the skeptic, or reprobated by
the formalist, or ridiculed by the men of the world? He should rather
support it with an earnestness proportioned to its value; he should
rescue it from the injuries it has sustained from its enemies; and the
discredit brought on it by its imprudent friends. He should redeem it
from the enthusiasm which misconceives, and from the ignorance or
malignity which misrepresents it. If the learned and the judicious are
silent in proportion as the illiterate and the vulgar are obtrusive and
loquacious, the most important truths will be abandoned by those who are
best abl