en proceeds from a superficial temper; and, not seldom,
from a supercilious disdain of whatever has no marketable use or value,
and from your utter indifference to true religion. Toleration is an herb
of spontaneous growth in the soil of indifference. Much of our union of
minds proceeds from want of knowledge and from want of affection to
religion. Many who boast of their church conformity, and that no one
hears of their noise, may thank the ignorance of their minds for that
kind of quietness.' But by far the most powerful assault that ever was
made upon lukewarmness in religion and upon self-seeking in the Church
was delivered by Dante in the tremendous third canto of his _Inferno_:--

Various tongues,
Horrible languages, outcries of woe,
Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse,
With hands together smote that swelled the sounds,
Made up a tumult that for ever whirls
Round through that air with solid darkness stain'd,
Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies.
I then, with error yet encompass'd, cried,
'O master! What is this I hear? What race
Are these, who seem so overcome with woe?'
He then to me: 'This miserable fate
Suffer the wretched souls of those who lived
Without or praise or blame, with that ill band
Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved,
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves
Were only. Mercy and Justice scorn them both.
Speak not of them, but look and pass them by.'
Forthwith, I understood for certain this the tribe
Of those ill spirits both to God displeasing
And to His foes. Those wretches who ne'er lived,
Went on in nakedness, and sorely stung
By wasps and hornets, which bedewed their cheeks
With blood, that mix'd with tears dropp'd to their feet,
And by disgustful worms was gathered there.

3. Now, we must all lay it continually and with uttermost humiliation to
heart that we all have Captain Anything's opportunism, his self-interest,
his insincerity, his instability, and his secret deceitfulness in
ourselves. That man knows little of himself who does not despise and
hate himself for his secret self-seeking even in the service of God. For,
how the love of praise will seduce and corrupt this man, and the love of
gain that man! How easy it is to flatter and adulate this man out of all
his former opinions and his deepest principles, and how an expected
advantage will make that other man forget no