u are struck and dazzled at the
view of the prizes of this life, as they are called! How you admire
the elegancies of art, the brilliance of wealth, or the force of
intellect! According to your opportunities you mix in the world, you
meet and converse with persons of various conditions and pursuits, and
are engaged in the numberless occurrences of daily life. You are full
of news; yon know what this or that person is doing, and what has
befallen him; what has not happened, which was near happening, what may
happen. You are full of ideas and feelings upon all that goes on
around you. But, from some cause or other, religion has no part, no
sensible influence, in your judgment of men and things. It is out of
your way. Perhaps you have your pleasure parties; you readily take
your share in them time after time; you pass continuous hours in
society where you know that it is quite impossible even to mention the
name of religion. Your heart is in scenes and places when conversation
on serious subjects is strictly forbidden by the rules of the world's
propriety. I do not say we should discourse on religious subjects,
wherever we go; I do not say we should make an effort to discourse on
them at any time, nor that we are to refrain from social meetings in
which religion does not lie on the surface of the conversation: but I
do say, that when men find their pleasure and satisfaction to lie in
society which proscribes religion, and when they deliberately and
habitually prefer those amusements which have necessarily nothing to do
with religion, such persons cannot view religion as God views it. And
this is the point: that the feelings of our hearts on the subject of
religion are different from the declared judgment of God; that we have
a natural distaste for that which He has said is our chief good.

3. Now let us pass to the more active occupations of life. Here, too,
religion is confessedly felt to be wearisome, it is out of place. The
transactions of worldly business, speculations in trade, ambitious
hopes, the pursuit of knowledge, the public occurrences of the day,
these find a way directly to the heart, they rouse, they influence. It
is superfluous to go about to prove this innate power over us of things
of time and sense, to make us think and act. The name of religion, on
the other hand, is weak and impotent; it contains no spell to kindle
the feelings of man, to make the heart beat with anxiety, and to
produce a