eir prayers, and asked--Do you suppose that any God, if he be worth
calling a God, will answer such a request as that? Nay, in our own
times, have not the brigands of Naples been in the habit of carrying a
leaden image of St Januarius in their hats, and praying to it to protect
them in their trade of robbery and murder? I leave you to guess what
answer good St Januarius, and much more He who made St Januarius, and all
heaven and earth, was likely to give to such a prayer as that.

So it is not all prayers for help that are heard, or deserve to be heard.
And indeed--I do not wish to be hard, but the truth must be spoken--there
are too many people in the world who pray to God to help them, when they
are in difficulties or in danger, or in fear of death and of hell, but
never pray at any other time, or for any other thing. They pray to be
helped out of what is disagreeable. But they never pray to be made good.
They are not good, and they do not care to become good. All they care
for, is to escape death, or pain, or poverty, or shame, when they see it
staring them in the face: and God knows I do not blame them. We are all
children, and, like children, we cry out when we are hurt; and that is no
sin to us. But that is no part of godliness, not even of mere religion.

But worse--it is still more sad to have to say it, but it is true--most
people's notions of the next world, and of salvation, as they call it,
are just as childish, material, selfish as their notions of this world.

They all wish and pray to be "saved." What do they mean? To be saved
from bodily pain in the next life, and to have bodily pleasure instead.
Pain and pleasure are the only gods which they really worship. They call
the former--hell. They call the latter--heaven. But they know as little
of one as of the other; and their notions of both are equally worthy
of--Shall I say it? Must I say it?--equally worthy of the savage in the
forest. They believe that they must either go to heaven or to hell. They
have, of course, no wish to go to the latter place; for whatever else
there is likely to be there--some of which might not be quite unpleasant
or new to them, such as evil-speaking, lying, and slandering, envy,
hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, bigotry included--there will be
certainly there--they have reason to believe--bodily pain; the thing
which they, being mostly comfortable people, dread most, and avoid most:
contrary, you will reme