and seeks it with singleness of mind. I
will only add, that the laboring class are not now condemned to
draughts of knowledge so shallow as to merit scorn. Many of them know
more of the outward world than all the philosophers of antiquity; and
Christianity has opened to them mysteries of the spiritual world which
kings and prophets were not privileged to understand. And are they,
then, to be doomed to spiritual inaction, as incapable of useful
thought?

It is sometimes said, that the multitude may think on the common
business of life, but not on higher subjects, and especially on
religion. This, it is said, must be received on authority; on this,
men in general can form no judgment of their own. But this is the last
subject on which the individual should be willing to surrender himself
to others' dictation. In nothing has he so strong an interest. In
nothing is it so important that his mind and heart should be alive and
engaged. In nothing has he readier means of judging for himself. In
nothing, as history shows, is he more likely to be led astray by such
as assume the office of thinking for him. Religion is a subject open
to all minds. Its great truths have their foundation in the soul
itself, and their proofs surround us on all sides. God has not shut up
the evidence of his being in a few books, written in a foreign
language, and locked up in the libraries of colleges and philosophers;
but has written his name on the heavens and on the earth, and even on
the minutest animal and plant; and his word, taught by Jesus Christ,
was not given to scribes and lawyers, but taught to the poor, to the
mass of men, on mountains, in streets, and on the sea-shore. Let me
not be told that the multitude do actually receive religion on
authority, or on the word of others. I reply, that a faith so received
seems to me of little worth. The precious, the living, the effectual
part of a poor man's faith, is that of which he sees the reasonableness
and excellence; that which approves itself to his intelligence, his
conscience, his heart; that which answers to deep wants in his own
soul, and of which he has the witness in his own inward and outward
experience. All other parts of his belief, those which he takes on
blind trust, and in which he sees no marks of truth and divinity, do
him little or no good. Too often they do him harm, by perplexing his
simple reason, by substituting the fictions and artificial systems of
theol