When we come to religious work done in common life by people without the special saintly vocation, there may be as much of it in England. Many of my readers will be acquainted with English people who quite unostentatiously give time and labour to the lower classes, either directly in the service of Christianity or simply in behalf of civilisation against barbarism. I know a busy English layman who gives a whole day every week, besides one or two evenings, to Christianising work, often sacrificing necessary rest. He is remarkably free from cant of all kinds, and opposed to asceticism. Such examples remain almost unknown, and may therefore be more numerous than we suspect, but it is not usually the male sex that does the most work of this kind. At a time when a book of mine called _Human Intercourse_ was published, an Anglican clergyman wrote me a friendly letter, in which he pointed to a special reason for the intimate alliance between “priests and women” in works requiring time and trouble. He said (in effect if not in words) that the clergy would as willingly appeal to men if they were likely to find in them coadjutors equally zealous, but that men are comparatively useless.[39] To this I felt inclined to answer, in defence of the irreligious sex, that men have commonly too much on their minds in business to leave them much liberty for religious undertakings. Besides this, independently of all questions of faith, the feminine nature is kinder than ours, and more disposed to beneficent interference. [Sidenote: Faith outside of this Creed or that.] [Sidenote: Faith in the Value of Veracity.] [Sidenote: Faith transferred from Religion to Politics.] It shocks a Catholic to be told that a Protestant may have strong and saintly faith, and it equally shocks a Protestant to be told that strong faith may be the ruling motive of an unbeliever in Christianity, yet it may be so. If we admit self-sacrifice as evidence of faith in one case, we must admit it equally in another. There is nothing so galling to human nature as the loss of social place and consideration, and it is usually in that form that unbelievers have learned the hardship of sacrifice. It requires immense faith in the ultimate value of veracity to express an unfashionable opinion. Now, this kind of faith has been by no means rare in France during the last hundred years. Much of the old spirit of faith, once exclusively religious, has transferred itself in France to political and social convictions. The democratic idea is not without its saints and martyrs, who have been willing to sacrifice all the comforts of existence for a belief and a hope detached from any personal success. CHAPTER V FORMALISM [Sidenote: Distinction between Formalism and Hypocrisy.]