“Have you thought really of their influence on your life? Have you considered that much of all that you call morals is indeed the effect of their religious teaching?” “That is _religion_ not the _priest_.” “I speak for the _instrument_, I confess; but a clergyman is to religion what an army is to a _war_—and you might as well think of conducting a national contest without officer and soldier, as a moral, religious contest without a clergy. And I doubt whether you have any idea of religion, unless it be a sort of restraint upon certain actions and passions. You mean morals when you say religion, and as you have seen morals exist where there was no profession of religion or observance of prescribed devotion, you think that such a morality is an independent system. Let me correct that idea. I agree that we find morals without religion, but I do not agree that morals would exist without it, and thousands of our young officers (I heard some of them last evening,) assert with philosophic gravity, that they are moral (they mean good) without religion. How vain—how short-sighted. They overlook the great fact that their morals are good habits founded on the religious teachings and practice of their mothers or priests, and that all the credit which they claim for their philosophy is due to Christianity, and that less settled in habits, or less reflective than they now are, they would fall with the first temptation that presented. What do you say to that Adolph?” “I say nothing now—proceed.” “I will proceed to make a personal application. To whom was the virtue of your childhood and youth due? Certainly to your virtuous, religious mother.” “Did you know my mother?” “What a question!” “If not, how did you know that she was religious?” “Because you said that in your childhood you were religious and had a mother. You gave me a knowledge of the cause when you stated the effect.” “But my mother was neither a _priest_ nor a _religeuse_.” “No, but she frequented the sacrament of the church, and attended to the instruction of a priest, and thus became _religious_. But you admit that falling into bad company your morals became, if not depraved, at least vitiated, and that you began to despise religion when you neglected morals.” “But when I began to reform, certainly I did not owe my change of purpose to a priest, and I only intended the reformation in my morals.” “To whom then were you indebted for moral improvement?” “To Louise.” “And did not Louise owe her instruction to the same priest whom you had neglected? Nay, is it not probable that she applied to Father Rudolph for advice in the very matter of your reformation, and that he prescribed the condition on which she was to indulge her affections and encourage yours?” “I cannot say that it was not so. But Louise was pretty independent in her manners, and would scarcely have asked the priest’s advice with regard to a lover.”