ing with many a
matter of pure indifference--a matter of taste; you may do well _with_
it, and you may do as well, or nearly as well, _without_ it.

"Hence it has come to pass that there are to be found men of science and
learning who never trouble themselves about religion at all. They would
certainly never care to abuse it; but then they plainly think that
science, and the world, and society can get on perfectly well without
it.

"And what is worse still, even professedly religious people are being
carried down this stream of opinion, without being fully or perhaps at
all conscious whither it has been leading them. Thus, even ladies
professing godliness are being entangled by the intellectual snares of
the day, and are so pursuing the shadows of this world--its honours, its
prizes, its mind-worship--as to become by degrees almost wholly
separated from God and thoughts of him. And thus, while they do not
outwardly neglect the ordinances of religion, they have ceased to meet
God in them; they hear in them a pleasing sound rather than a living
voice, and find themselves offering to God, when they join in psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs, rather a mere musical accompaniment than the
intelligent melody of a heart that believes and loves.

"Oh, don't be deceived, dear friends, any of you. You who go to the
mills, or are engaged in any other manual labour, don't think, because
you may be spending your evenings and leisure in mechanics' institutes,
or in attending science classes, or in working up scientific subjects,
that in these pursuits you can find real peace, without religion and
without God; that religion is no matter of necessity, but only a
comfortable and creditable superfluity; or that, at any rate, by using
outward attendance on religious ordinances, as a sort of make-weight,
you can be solidly happy while your hearts are far from God. It cannot
be. You are not thus disgracing our common humanity like the drunkards
and profligates, but, then, you are not fulfilling the true law of your
being; you cannot be doing so while you are travelling all your lives in
a circle which keeps you ever on the outside of the influence of the
love and of the grace of that God who made you and that Saviour who
redeemed you.

"Don't mistake me, dear friends; I rejoice with all my heart to see
progress of every kind amongst you, so long as it is real. Some people
say that we ministers of the gospel are foes to education