te reader will find, throughout these lectures, a
hesitation in driving points home, and a pausing short of conclusions
which he will feel I would fain have come to; hesitation which arises
wholly from this uncertainty of my hearers' temper. For I do not now
speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the time of my first forward youth,
in any proselyting temper, as desiring to persuade any one of what, in
such matters, I thought myself; but, whomsoever I venture to address, I
take for the time his creed as I find it; and endeavour to push it into
such vital fruit as it seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with a
great part of the existing English people, that they are in possession
of a book which tells them, straight from the lips of God all they ought
to do, and need to know. I have read that book, with as much care as
most of them, for some forty years; and am thankful that, on those who
trust it, I can press its pleadings. My endeavour has been uniformly to
make them trust it more deeply than they do; trust it, not in their own
favourite verses only, but in the sum of all; trust it not as a fetish
or talisman, which they are to be saved by daily repetitions of; but as
a Captain's order, to be heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always
encouraged by supposing my hearers to hold such belief. To these, if to
any, I once had hope of addressing, with acceptance, words which
insisted on the guilt of pride, and the futility of avarice; from these,
if from any, I once expected ratification of a political economy, which
asserted that the life was more than the meat, and the body than
raiment; and these, it once seemed to me, I might ask without accusation
or fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the bestowal
of their heart's treasure, to separate themselves from the crowd of whom
it is written, 'After all these things do the Gentiles seek.'

It cannot, however, be assumed, with any semblance of reason, that a
general audience is now wholly, or even in majority, composed of these
religious persons. A large portion must always consist of men who admit
no such creed; or who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on
it. And as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for honest
declaration and fulfilment of his belief in life,--with the so-called
Infidel, I desired to plead for an honest declaration and fulfilment of
his belief in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must either
hereafter live, or