ew principle,
I am persuaded, will never impair our cheerfulness, it will only fix it
on a solid ground. By purifying the motive, it will raise the enjoyment.

"But if we have not so many bad habits to correct as poor Carlton had, I
question if we have not as many difficulties to meet in another way. His
loose course was discreditable. His vices made him stand ill with the
world. He would, therefore, acquire nothing but credit in changing his
outward practice. Lady Belfield and I, on the contrary, stand rather too
well with the world. We had just that external regularity, that cool
indifference about our own spiritual improvement, and the wrong courses
of our friends, which procure regard, because they do not interfere with
others, nor excite jealousy for ourselves. But we have now to encounter
that censure, which we have, perhaps, hitherto been too solicitous to
avoid. It will still be our trial, but I humbly trust that it will be no
longer our snare. Our morality pleased, because it seemed to proceed
merely from a sense of propriety; our strictness will offend when it is
found to spring from a principle of religion.

"To what tendency in the heart of man, my dear Stanley, is it owing,
that religion is commonly seen to excite more suspicion than the want of
it? When a man of the world meets with a gay, thoughtless, amusing
person, he seldom thinks of inquiring whether such a one be immoral, or
an unbeliever, or a profligate, though the bent of his conversation
rather leans that way. Satisfied with what he finds him, he feels little
solicitude to ascertain what he really is. But no sooner does actual
piety show itself in any man, than your friends are putting you on your
guard; there is instantly a suggestion, a hint, a suspicion, 'Does he
not carry things too far?' 'Is he not righteous over much?' 'Is he not
intemperate in his zeal?' 'Above all things, is he _sincere_?' and, in
short--for that is the centre in which all the lines of suspicion and
reprobation meet--'_Is he not a Methodist?_'

"I trust, however, that, through divine grace, our minds will be
fortified against all attacks on this our weak side; this pass through
which the sort of assaults most formidable to us will be likely to
enter. I was mentioning this danger to Caroline this morning. She opened
her Bible, over which she now spends much of her solitary time, and with
an emphasis foreign from her usual manner, read,

"'Cease ye from man, whose breath