, and now I shall enjoy her tortures for ever."

THANK GOD.

The peculiarly selfish character of religion is often exemplified, but
we do not remember a better illustration than the one which recently
occurred at Folkestone. The twenty-seven seamen who were rescued from
the _Benvenue_ attended a thanksgiving service at the parish church,
where the vicar delivered "a short address suitable to the occasion."
Their captain and four of his crew were drowned, and the lucky survivors
thanked the Lord for saving them, though he let the others perish in the
yeasty waves.

We should like to see a copy of that vicar's suitable discourse. We
suspect it would be an interesting study to a cynic. No doubt the man of
God's chief motive was professional. The saving of those shipwrecked men
was a splendid piece of work, but it required to be rounded off. It was
not complete unless the parson blessed it and approved it with a text.
He came in at the finish when the danger was all over, and gave the
perfecting touch in the shape of a cheap benediction. Probably the man
of God put in a good word for Providence. The poor sailors had been
snatched from the jaws of death; their minds were therefore in a state
of agitation, and at the very best they are not a logical or reflective
race of men. Very likely, therefore, they assented to the theory that
they owed their deliverance to the blessing of God, but a little quiet
thought about the matter would possibly make them see it in a different
light.

The persons who visibly _did_ save them from drowning were gallant
lifeboat-men, who put their own lives in deadly peril, fighting the
storm inch by inch in the hope of rescuing a number of unknown fellow
creatures. All honor to _them!_ We would sooner doff the hat to them
than to any prince in Christendom. Some of them, perhaps, take a drop
too much occasionally, and their language may often be more vigorous
than polite. But all that is superficial. The real test of a man is what
he will do when he is put to it. When those rough fellows saw a brave
task before them, all the skin-deep blackguardism dropped away; the
heroic came out in supreme majesty, and they were consecrated by it more
truly than any smug priest at his profitable altar. As they jumped into
the boat they proved the nobility of human nature, and the damnable
falsehood of the Christian doctrine of original sin.

What share Providence had in the matter is not very apparent.