ination or the like, and
temporary or permanent, according to the circumstances of the disposing
cause; a state to which we all are liable, as we are liable to any
other mental injury, but unmanly and unworthy of our dignity as
rational beings. Here again it is enough for our purpose, that it is
allowed by these persons that the love of religion is unnatural and
inconsistent with the original condition of our minds.

The same remark may be made upon the notions which secretly prevail in
certain quarters at the present day, concerning the unsuitableness of
Christianity to an enlightened age. Men there are who look upon the
inspired word of God with a sort of indulgence, as if it had its use,
and had done service in its day; that in times of ignorance it awed and
controlled fierce barbarians, whom nothing else could have subdued; but
that from its very claim to be divine and infallible, and its
consequent unalterableness, it is an obstacle to the improvement of the
human race beyond a certain point, and must ultimately fall before the
gradual advancement of mankind in knowledge and virtue. In other
words, the literature of the day is weary of Revealed Religion.

5. Once more; that religion is in itself a weariness is seen even in
the conduct of the better sort of persons, who really on the whole are
under the influence of its spirit. So dull and uninviting is calm and
practical religion, that religious persons are ever exposed to the
temptation of looking out for excitements of one sort or other, to make
it pleasurable to them. The spirit of the Gospel is a meek, humble,
gentle, unobtrusive spirit. It doth not cry nor lift up its voice in
the streets, unless called upon by duty so to do, and then it does it
with pain. Display, pretension, conflict, are unpleasant to it. What
then is to be thought of persons who are ever on the search after
novelties to make religion interesting to them; who seem to find that
Christian activity cannot be kept up without unchristian party-spirit,
or Christian conversation without unchristian censoriousness? Why,
this; that religion is to them as to others, taken by itself, a
weariness, and requires something foreign to its own nature to make it
palatable. Truly it is a weariness to the natural man to serve God
humbly and in obscurity; it is very wearisome, and very monotonous, to
go on day after day watching all we do and think, detecting our secret
failings, denying ourselves, c