"'I ought to have stated to the noble Chairman just now that cases have come within my own experience of men who have come up from school as Christians, and have been earnest Christians up to the time of beginning to read philosophy for the Final School, but who, during the year and a half or two years employed in this study, have surrendered first their Christianity, and next their belief in God, and have left the University not believing in a Supreme Being.'" Now what kind of a being is the infidel, or the man without religion? To have no religion is a crime, and to boast of having none is the height of folly. He that has no religion must necessarily lose the esteem and confidence of his friends. What confidence, I ask, can be placed in a man who has no religion, and, consequently, no knowledge of his duties? What confidence can you place in a man who never feels himself bound by any obligation of conscience, who has no higher motive to direct him than his self-love, his own interests? The pagan Roman, though enlightened only by reason, had yet virtue enough to say: "I live not for _myself_, but for the Republic"; but the infidel's motto is: "I live only for myself; I care for no one but myself." Oh, what a monster would such a man be in society were he really to think as he speaks, and to act as he thinks! A man who has no religion, must first prove that he is honest before we can believe him to be so. It is said of kings and rulers, they must prove that they have a heart, and it may also be said of the man who has no religion, that _he must prove_ that he has a _conscience._ And I fear he would not find it so easy a task. A man without religion is a man without reason, a man without principle, a man sunk in the grossest ignorance of what religion is. He blasphemes what he does not understand. He rails at the doctrines of Christianity, without really knowing what these doctrines are. He sneers at the doctrines and practices of religion, because he cannot refute them. He speaks with the utmost gravity of the fine arts, the fashions, and even matters the most trivial, and he turns into ridicule the most sacred subjects. In the midst of his own circle of fops and silly women, he utters his shallow conceits with all the pompous assurance of a pedant. The man without religion is a dishonest plagiarist, who copies from Christian writers all the objections made against the Church by the infidels of former and modern times; but he takes good care to omit all the excellent answers and complete refutations which are contained in these very same writings. His object is not to seek the truth, but to propagate falsehood.