cter of children's
minds: sensible objects first meet their observation; it is not
wonderful that they should at first be inclined to limit their thoughts
to things of sense. A distinct profession of faith, and a conscious
maintenance of principle, may imply a strength and consistency of
thought to which they are as yet unequal. Again, childhood is
capricious, ardent, light-hearted; it cannot think deeply or long on
any subject. Yet all this is not enough to account for the fact in
question--why they should feel this distaste for the very subject of
religion. Why should they be ashamed of paying reverence to an unseen,
all-powerful God, whose existence they do not disbelieve? Yet they do
feel ashamed of it. Is it that they are ashamed of themselves, not of
their religion; feeling the inconsistency of professing what they
cannot fully practise? This refinement does not materially alter the
view of the case; for it is merely their own acknowledgment that they
do not love religion as much as they ought. No; we seem compelled to
the conclusion, that there is by nature some strange discordance
between what we love and what God loves. So much, then, on the state
of boyhood.

2. "Religion is a weariness." I will next take the case of young
persons when they first enter into life. Here I may appeal to some
perhaps who now hear me. Alas! my brethren, is it not so? Is not
religion associated in your minds with gloom, melancholy, and
weariness? I am not at present going so far as to reprove you for it,
though I might well do so, if I did, perhaps you might at once turn
away, and I wish you calmly to think the matter over, and bear me
witness that I state the fact correctly. It is so; you cannot deny it.
The very terms "religion," "devotion," "piety," "conscientiousness,"
"mortification," and the like, you find to be inexpressibly dull and
cheerless: you cannot find fault with them, indeed, you would if you
could; and whenever the words are explained in particulars and
realized, then you do find occasion for exception and objection. But
though you cannot deny the claims of religion used as a vague and
general term, yet how irksome, cold, uninteresting, uninviting, does it
at best appear to you! how severe its voice! how forbidding its aspect!
With what animation, on the contrary, do you enter into the mere
pursuits of time and the world! What bright anticipations of joy and
happiness flit before your eyes! How yo