And nothing is commoner, even among worldly people, my brethren, than a sort of easy, vague acknowledgment that it is so; nothing easier than a kind of fluent talk about the soul, and the importance, perhaps the necessity, of saving the soul; if not just at present, certainly at the earliest possible opportunity; if not by a life of faith and purity to God, and of truth and goodwill to man—at all events by holding fast to some particular set of opinions, or of texts, some one favourite doctrine, or pet form of outward service to God. And even below this range of talkers, there are others who say, The soul immortal?—Oh, yes, of course, man is to be in Heaven hereafter—if all be well—and we trust by the mercy of God that at last we shall reach that land; but, in the meanwhile, they live on from day to day, in one round of easy smoothness, working only for the body, its care, its comfort, its life; as if there were no dwelling-place but earth; as if man’s soul were but a matter of concern for the future; as if Christ had never borne the bitter Cross for man’s sin, to open for him the gates of Paradise! Their terrible and fatal mistake, you see, is the fashioning out a religion as a thing apart from their daily life, and thinking of their souls as apart from themselves. Whereas there is no true religion but such as speaks in a man’s life, and is its vital breath; and the soul is no other but the man himself. They madly look upon religion as a thing for Sundays, for fixed times only, and for set forms; times and forms to be used as a sort of charm against uncomfortable thoughts of death, or fear of God’s anger; or as a set-off for the follies, and sins, and selfishness of the week; something that shall set all right at the last, and make the account square when the balance is against them; or for still worse and weaker reasons: because it is right and decent to go to church, and do as so many others do whom they know and imitate, and whose regard they value. God help the man—ere it be too late—who trusts to such a scheme of religion as this; for it is full of deceit and peril! It may end, and it probably will end, in his forgetting his soul altogether. Not forgetting to wish that his soul may be saved at last, and that peace may be with him when death comes, and joy beyond it; not this, because every man, however foolish or however wicked, wishes this much, or will wish it some day; but absolutely forgetting and ignoring the fact that the soul is the man himself; that its life, and passions, and desires, and hunger, and thirst, are to be looked to, cared for, and fed day by day; that if he hopes for Heaven at all, he must begin to get ready for it _now_, while life lasts; and that in neglecting this, and letting religion slip out of his daily life, he is perilling his very existence, he is dying by inches. Heart, conscience, soul, spirit, are becoming seared, cold, dark, and dead, while he, to all outward