do I find these words, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest!'"

In the works of Christian and pagan moralists, it is declared that
virtue is the only happiness of this life. You cannot become better, but
you will become happier; you cannot become worse without an increase of
misery. Few men are so reprobate as not to have some lucid moments, and
in such moments few can stand up unshaken against the appeal of their
own experience. What have been the wages of sin? What has the devil done
for you?

Though prudence in itself is neither virtue nor holiness, yet without
prudence neither virtue nor holiness can exist.

Art thou under the tyranny of sin, a slave to vicious habits, at enmity
with God, a fugitive from thy own conscience? Oh, how idle the disputes
whether the listening to the dictates of prudence from self-interested
motives be virtue, when the _not_ listening is guilt, misery, madness,
and despair! The most Christian-like pity thou canst show is to take
pity on thy own soul. The best service thou canst render is to show
mercy to thyself.

_IV.--APHORISMS ON SPIRITUAL RELIGION_

If there be aught spiritual in man, the will must be such. If there be a
will, there must be spirituality in man.

There is more in man than can be rationally referred to the life of
Nature and the mechanism of organisation. He has a will not included in
his mechanism; the will is, in an especial sense, the spiritual part of
our humanity.

I assume a something, the proof of which no man can _give_ to another,
yet every man may find for himself. If any man say that he cannot find
it, I am bound to disbelieve him. I cannot do otherwise without
unsettling the foundations of my own moral nature. If he will not find
it, he excommunicates himself, forfeits his personal rights, and becomes
a thing--_i.e.,_ one who may be used against his will and without regard
to his interest. If the materialist use the words "right" and
"obligation," he does it deceptively, and means only compulsion and
power. To overthrow faith in aught higher than nature and physical
necessity is the very purpose of his argument. But he cannot be ignorant
that the best and greatest of men have devoted their lives to enforce
the contrary; and there is not a language in which he could argue for
ten minutes in support of his scheme without sliding into phrases that
imply the contrary.

The Christian grounds his philosophy