1109. To come again to more direct practice, and to our own habits of life. Who is there who thinks _first_ what is right, and according to the pattern of Christ, and after the will of God, in what he is about to do, and not what is wise and expedient? Who seeks first the kingdom of God, and God’s rule of righteousness, and trusts that all temporal good consequences will follow upon it? Who is there who thinks and abides _only_ by the rule of what is right and commanded? We may almost answer in the words of Scripture, ‘There is none righteous, no, not one!’ Who believes in and trusts to the assistance and suggestions of the Spirit in his designs and undertakings, and believes, and acts, and writes, and thinks, as believing that the most useful and important and influential suggestions of our thoughts and invention come to our mind by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, more than by our own cleverness, and exertion, and memory, and prays for divine help upon commencing every task, or writing, or undertaking accordingly? Who forbears strictly and endeavours to expel at once all thought and every suggestion of the mind in worldly matters on a Sunday, with confidence and faith that the same and more useful thought will be supplied on the succeeding week-days, and that the unqualified dedication and sanctification of the Lord’s day will make the labour of the six days more effectual and fruitful than would be that of the seven? Who would believe now that a sabbatical year would not necessarily be impracticable and ruinous, or that a populous country could exist under such a rule, or that it would not produce a debasing and demoralizing idleness?” 1110. Let not the reader infer that these admissions come from a free-thinker. The following remarks will prove the writer one of the _faithful_, in the sense in which this epithet argues a mind chained down by abject enthralment, to put any constructions on facts but that which is subversive of educational prejudice: “_All the evils of which the existence is admitted are due to our narrowing down our reception of truths and facts to the limits of reason—of our own more or less shallow individual reason._” 1111. Now to me it seems that the nominal profession of a faith in facts which are absurd and contradictory, and professed reverence for precepts which are as utterly impracticable as unwise in the abstract, induces this monstrous incompatibility of the actual morality of Christendom with the professions of Christians and doctrines of Christianity. 1112. Our submission to scriptural authority is not to be governed by our own reason, but by that of persons who lived many ages ago, originally assumed to be inspired by God, upon human testimony; which in the case of Spiritualism, or any other than the one in point, is treated as mere chaff.