an unseemly wild way, as one
whose destitution and shame were but detected by the visitation. He
stript off his clothes and prophesied before Samuel, and lay down in
that state all that day and all that night.

This difference we see even at this day:--of persons professing
religion, some are like Samuel, some like Saul; some (as it were) cast
off their garments and prophesy in disorder and extravagance; others
minister before the Lord, "girded with a linen ephod," with "their
loins girt and their lamps burning," like men awfully expecting the
coming of their great and glorious Judge. By the latter, I mean the
true children of the Holy Catholic Church, by the former, I mean
heretics and schismatic.

There have ever been from the first these two kinds of
Christians--those who belonged to the Church, and those who did not.
There never was a time since the Apostles' day, when the Church was
not; and there never was a time but men were to be found who preferred
some other way of worship to the Church's way. These two kinds of
professed Christians ever have been--Church Christians, and Christians
not of the Church; and it is remarkable, I say, that while, on the one
hand, reverence for sacred things has been a characteristic of Church
Christians on the whole, so, want of reverence has been the
characteristic on the whole of Christians not of the Church. The one
have prophesied after the figure of Samuel, the other after the figure
of Saul.

Of course there are many exceptions to this remark in the case of
individuals. Of course I am not speaking of inconsistent persons and
exceptional cases, in the Church, or out of it; but of those who act up
to what they profess. I mean that zealous, earnest, and faithful
members of the Church have generally been reverent; and zealous,
earnest, and faithful members of other religious bodies have generally
been irreverent. Again, after all, there will be real exceptions in
the case of individuals which we cannot account for; but I mean that,
on, the _whole_, it will be found that reverence is one of the marks or
notes of the Church; true though it may be that some particular
individuals, who have kept apart from it, have not been without a
reverential spirit notwithstanding.

Indeed so natural is the connexion between a reverential spirit in
worshipping God, and faith in God, that the wonder only is, how any one
can for a moment imagine he has faith in God, and yet allow himself