Now, my religious friends, I continually hear you talk of acting for God's glory, and giving God praise. Might you not, for the present, think less of praising, and more of pleasing Him? He can, perhaps, dispense with your praise; your opinions of His character, even when they come to be held by a large body of the religious press, are not of material importance to Him. He has the hosts of heaven to praise Him, who see more of His ways, it is likely, than you; but you hear that you may be pleasing to Him, if you try:--that He expected, then, to have some satisfaction in you; and might have even great satisfaction--well-pleasing, as in His own Son, if you tried. The sparrows and the robins, if you give them leave to nest as they choose about your garden, will have their own opinions about your garden; some of them will think it well laid out,--others ill. You are not solicitous about their opinions; but you like them to love each other; to build their nests without stealing each other's sticks, and to trust you to take care of them. Perhaps, in like manner, if in this garden of the world you would leave off telling its Master your opinions of Him, and, much more, your quarrelling about your opinions of Him; but would simply trust Him, and mind your own business modestly, He might have more satisfaction in you than He has had yet these eighteen hundred and seventy-one years, or than He seems likely to have in the eighteen hundred and seventy-second. For first, instead of behaving like sparrows and robins, you want to behave like those birds you read the Gospel from the backs of,--eagles. Now the Lord of the garden made the claws of eagles for them, and your fingers for you; and if you would do the work of fingers, with the fingers He made, would, without doubt, have satisfaction in you. But, instead of fingers, you want to have claws--not mere short claws, at the finger-ends, as Giotto's Injustice has them; but long claws that will reach leagues away; so you set to work to make yourselves manifold claws,--far-scratching;--and this smoke, which hides the sun and chokes the sky--this Egyptian darkness that may be felt--manufactured by you, singular modern children of Israel, that you may have no light in your dwellings, is none the fairer, because cast forth by the furnaces, in which you forge your weapons of war. A very singular children of Israel! Your Father, Abraham, indeed, once saw the smoke of a country go up as the smoke of a furnace; but not with envy of the country. Your English power is coal? Well; also the power of the Vale of Siddim was in slime,--petroleum of the best; yet the Kings of the five cities fell there; and the end was no well-pleasing of God among men.