t considers a high religious profession as a sure mark of
meanness and depravity. On the very first day on which the restraint of
fear is taken away, and on which men can venture to say what they think,
a frightful peal of blasphemy and ribaldry proclaims that the
short-sighted policy which aimed at making a nation of saints has made a
nation of scoffers.

It was thus in France about the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Louis the Fourteenth in his old age became religious: he determined that
his subjects should be religious, too: he shrugged his shoulders and
knitted his brows if he observed at his levee or near his dinner-table
any gentleman who neglected the duties enjoined by the Church, and
rewarded piety with blue ribbons, invitations to Marli, governments,
pensions, and regiments. Forthwith Versailles became, in everything but
dress, a convent. The pulpits and confessionals were surrounded by
swords and embroidery. The Marshals of France were much in prayer; and
there was hardly one among the Dukes and Peers who did not carry good
little books in his pocket, fast during Lent, and communicate at Easter.
Madame de Maintenon, who had a great share in the blessed work, boasted
that devotion had become quite the fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and
like a fashion it passed away. No sooner had the old king been carried
to St. Denis than the whole court unmasked. Every man hastened to
indemnify himself, by the excess of licentiousness and impudence, for
years of mortification. The same persons who, a few months before, with
meek voices and demure looks, had consulted divines about the state of
their souls now surrounded the midnight table, where, amidst the
bounding of champagne corks, a drunken prince, enthroned between Dubois
and Madame de Parabere, hiccoughed out atheistical arguments and obscene
jests. The early part of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth had been a
time of license; but the most dissolute men of that generation would
have blushed at the orgies of the Regency.

It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil War. We
are by no means unmindful of the great debt which mankind owes to the
Puritans of that time, the deliverers of England, the founders of the
American commonwealths. But in the day of their power, those men
committed one great fault, which left deep and lasting traces in the
national character and manners. They mistook the end and overrated the
force of government. They d