But does it follow from all this, that the tone of moral action in the State should be lowered? Such a fear is what perplexes serious and sober men, who are laudably unwilling to surrender, in a world where falsehood has so wide a range, any portion of this vantage-ground of truth and right. I, who may have helped to mislead them by an over-hasty generalisation, would now submit what seems to me calculated to re-assure the mind. I make an appeal to the history of the last thirty years. During those years, what may be called the dogmatic allegiance of the State to religion has been greatly relaxed; but its consciousness of moral duty has been not less notably quickened and enhanced. I do not say this in depreciation of Christian dogma. But we are still a Christian people. Christianity has wrought itself into the public life of fifteen hundred years. Precious truths, and laws of relative right and the brotherhood of man, such as the wisdom of heathenism scarcely dreamed of and could never firmly grasp, the Gospel has made to be part of our common inheritance, common as the sunlight that warms us, and as the air we breathe. Sharp though our divisions in belief may be, they have not cut so deep as to prevent, or as perceptibly to impair, the recognition of these great guides and fences of moral action. It is far better for us to trust to the operation of these our common principles and feelings, and to serve our Maker together in that wherein we are at one, rather than in aiming at a standard theoretically higher, to set out with a breach of the great commandment, which forms the groundwork of all relative duties, and to refuse to do as we would be done by.