And as the providence of marriage, and the giving to each man the help meet for his life, is now among us destroyed by the wantonness of harlotry, so the providence of the Father who would fill men's hearts with food and gladness is destroyed among us by prostitution of joyless drink; and the never to be enough damned guilt of men, and governments, gathering pence at the corners of the streets, standing there, pot in hand, crying, 'Turn in hither; come, eat of my evil bread, and drink of my beer, which I have venomously mingled.' Against which temptations--though never against the tempters--one sometimes hears one's foolish clergy timorously inveighing; and telling young idlers that it is wrong to be lustful, and old labourers that it is wrong to be thirsty: but I never heard a clergyman yet, (and during thirty years of the prime of my life I heard one sermon at least every Sunday, so that it is after experience of no fewer than one thousand five hundred sermons, most of them by scholars, and many of them by earnest men,) that I now solemnly state I never heard one preacher deal faithfully with the quarrel between God and Mammon, or explain the need of choice between the service of those two masters. And all vices are indeed summed, and all their forces consummated, in that simple acceptance of the authority of gold instead of the authority of God; and preference of gain, or the increase of gold, to godliness, or the peace of God. I take then, as I promised, the fourteenth and fifteenth Psalms for examination with respect to this point. The second verse of the fourteenth declares that of the children of men, there are none that seek God. The fifth verse of the same Psalm declares that God is in the generation of the righteous. In them, observe; not needing to be sought by them. From which statements, evangelical persons conclude that there are no righteous persons at all. Again, the fourth verse of the Psalm declares that all the workers of iniquity eat up God's people as they eat bread. Which appears to me a very serious state of things, and to be put an end to, if possible; but evangelical persons conclude thereupon that the workers of iniquity and the Lord's people are one and the same. Nor have I ever heard in the course of my life any single evangelical clergyman so much as put the practical inquiry, Who is eating, and who is being eaten? Again, the first verse of the Psalm declares that the fool hath said in his heart there is no God; but the sixth verse declares of the poor that he not only knows there is a God, but finds Him to be a refuge. Whereupon evangelical persons conclude that the fool and the poor mean the same people; and make all the haste they can to be rich.