is thy
brother" he too made answer, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Did I
not pay my brother _his_ wages, the thing he had merited from me?

O sumptuous Merchant-Prince, illustrious game-preserving Duke, is
there no way of 'killing' thy brother but Cain's rude way! 'A
good man by the very look of him, by his very presence with us as
a fellow wayfarer in this Life-pilgrimage, _promises_ so much:'
woe to him if he forget all such promises, if he never know that
they were given! To a deadened soul, seared with the brute
Idolatry of Sense, to whom going to Hell is equivalent to not
making money, all 'promises,' and moral duties, that cannot be
pleaded for in Courts of Requests, address themselves in vain.
Money he can be ordered to pay, but nothing more. I have not
heard in all Past History, and expect not to hear in all Future
History, of any Society anywhere under God's Heaven supporting
itself on such Philosophy. The Universe is not made so; it is
made otherwise than so. The man or nation of men that thinks it
is made so, marches forward nothing doubting, step after step;
but marches--whither we know! In these last two centuries of
Atheistic Government (near two centuries now, since the blessed
restoration of his Sacred Majesty, and Defender of the Faith,
Charles Second), I reckon that we have pretty well exhausted what
of 'firm earth' there was for us to march on;--and are now, very
ominously, shuddering, reeling, and let us hope trying to recoil,
on the cliff's edge!--

For out of this that we call Atheism come so many other _isms_
and falsities, each falsity with its misery at its heels!--A SOUL
is not like wind (_spiritus,_ or breath) contained within a
capsule; the ALMIGHTY MAKER is not like a Clockmaker that once,
in old immemorial ages, having _made_ his Horologe of a Universe,
sits ever since and sees it go! Not at all. Hence comes
Atheism; come, as we say, many other _isms;_ and as the sum of
all, comes Valetism, the _reverse_ of Heroism; sad root of all
woes whatsoever. For indeed, as no man ever saw the above-said
wind-element enclosed within its capsule, and finds it at bottom
more deniable than conceivable; so too he finds, in spite of
Bridgewater Bequests, your Clockmaker Almighty an entirely
questionable affair, a deniable affair;--and accordingly denies
it, and along with it so much else. Alas, one knows not what and
how much else! For the faith in an Invisible, Unnameable,
Godlike, pr