sure in its operation,
yet will often or generally be lively enough to create an absolute
loathing of certain offences, or a detestation and scorn of them as
ungentlemanlike, to which ruder natures, nay, such as have far more of
real religion in them, are tempted, or even betrayed. Scarcely can we
exaggerate the value, in its place, of a safeguard such as this, as
regards those multitudes who are thrown upon the open field of the world,
or are withdrawn from its eye and from the restraint of public opinion. In
many cases, where it exists, sins, familiar to those who are otherwise
circumstanced, will not even occur to the mind: in others, the sense of
shame and the quickened apprehension of detection will act as a sufficient
obstacle to them, when they do present themselves before it. Then, again,
the fastidiousness I am speaking of will create a simple hatred of that
miserable tone of conversation which, obtaining as it does in the world,
is a constant fuel of evil, heaped up round about the soul: moreover, it
will create an irresolution and indecision in doing wrong, which will act
as a _remora_ till the danger is past away. And though it has no tendency,
I repeat, to mend the heart, or to secure it from the dominion in other
shapes of those very evils which it repels in the particular modes of
approach by which they prevail over others, yet cases may occur when it
gives birth, after sins have been committed, to so keen a remorse and so
intense a self-hatred, as are even sufficient to cure the particular moral
disorder, and to prevent its accesses ever afterwards;--as the spendthrift
in the story, who, after gazing on his lost acres from the summit of an
eminence, came down a miser, and remained a miser to the end of his days.

And all this holds good in a special way, in an age such as ours, when,
although pain of body and mind may be rife as heretofore, yet other
counteractions of evil, of a penal character, which are present at other
times, are away. In rude and semi-barbarous periods, at least in a climate
such as our own, it is the daily, nay, the principal business of the
senses, to convey feelings of discomfort to the mind, as far as they
convey feelings at all. Exposure to the elements, social disorder and
lawlessness, the tyranny of the powerful, and the inroads of enemies, are
a stern discipline, allowing brief intervals, or awarding a sharp penance,
to sloth and sensuality. The rude food, the scanty clothing,