to that low standard of practical virtue
which prevails. If we lower the principle, if we obscure the light, if
we reject the influence, if we sully the purity, if we abridge the
strictness of the divine law, there will remain no ascending power in
the soul, no stirring spirit, no quickening aspiration after perfection,
no stretching forward after that holiness to which the beatific vision
is specifically promised. It is vain to expect that the practice will
rise higher than the principle which inspires it; that the habits will
be superior to the motives which govern them."

"Selfishness, security, and sensuality," said the Doctor, "are predicted
by our Saviour, as the character of the last times. In alluding to the
antediluvian world, and the cause of its destruction, eating, drinking,
and marrying could not be named in the gospel as things censurable in
themselves, they being necessary to the very existence of that world
which the abuse of them was tending to destroy. Our Saviour does not
describe criminality by the excess, but by the spirit of the act. He
speaks of eating, not gluttony; of drinking, not intoxication; of
marriage, not licentious intercourse. This seems a plain intimation,
that carrying on the transactions of the world in the spirit of the
world, and that habitual deadness to the concerns of eternity, in beings
so alive to the pleasures or the interests of the present moment, do not
indicate a state of safety, even where gross acts of vice may be rare."

Mr. Stanley said it was his opinion that it is not by a few, or even by
many, instances of excessive wickedness, that the moral state of a
country is to be judged, but by a general averseness and indifference to
_real_ religion. "A few examples of glaring impiety," said he, "may
furnish more subject for declamation, but are not near so deadly a
symptom. It is no new remark, that more men are undone by an excessive
indulgence in things permitted, than by the commission of avowed sins."

"How happy," said Sir John, "are those who by their faith and piety are
delivered from these difficulties!"

"My dear Belfield," replied Mr. Stanley, "where are those privileged
beings? It is one sad proof of human infirmity, that the best men have
continually these things to struggle with. What makes the difference is,
that those whom we call good men struggle on to the end, while the
others, not seeing the danger, do not struggle at all."

"Christians," said Dr. B