But, it is said, our religion is gone: we no longer believe in
St. Edmund, no longer see the figure of him 'on the rim of the
sky,' minatory or confirmatory! God's absolute Laws, sanctioned
by an eternal Heaven and an eternal Hell, have become Moral
Philosophies, sanctioned by able computations of Profit and
Loss, by weak considerations of Pleasures of Virtue and the
Moral Sublime.

It is even so. To speak in the ancient dialect, we 'have
forgotten God;'--in the most modern dialect and very truth of the
matter, we have taken up the Fact of this Universe as it _is
not._ We have quietly closed our eyes to the eternal Substance
of things, and opened them only to the Shews and Shams of things.
We quietly believe this Universe to be intrinsically a great
unintelligible PERHAPS; extrinsically, clear enough, it is a
great, most extensive Cattlefold and Workhouse, with most
extensive Kitchen-ranges, Dining-tables,--whereat he is wise who
can find a place! All the Truth of this Universe is uncertain;
only the profit and loss of it, the pudding and praise of it, are
and remain very visible to the practical man.

There is no longer any God for us! God's Laws are become a
Greatest-Happiness Principle, a Parliamentary Expediency: the
Heavens overarch us only as an Astronomical Time-keeper; a butt
for Herschel-telescopes to shoot science at, to shoot
sentimentalities at:--in our and old Jonson's dialect, man has
lost the _soul_ out of him; and now, after the due period,--
begins to find the want of it! This is verily the plague-spot;
centre of the universal Social Gangrene, threatening all modern
things with frightful death. To him that will consider it, here
is the stem, with its roots and taproot, with its world-wide
upas-boughs and accursed poison-exudations, under which the world
lies writhing in atrophy and agony. You touch the focal-centre
of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, when
you lay your hand on this. There is no religion; there is no
God; man has lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt.
Vainly: in killing Kings, in passing Reform Bills, in French
Revolutions, Manchester Insurrections, is found no remedy. The
foul elephantine leprosy, alleviated for an hour, reappears in
new force and desperateness next hour.

For actually this is _not_ the real fact of the world; the world
is not made so, but otherwise!--Truly, any Society setting out
from this No-God hypothesi