And here we come to the root of the whole matter, to the field where reform is most needed, that is, in the moral condition of our society. While there are few nations in which there is such a diversity of religious views and multiplicity of religious sects, there are few peoples which are so proverbially irreligious as our own. Yet our condition in this respect is rather a neutral one than otherwise, for while we are without any positive immorality which should make us preeminent above other nations for vice, there is, nevertheless, in our midst, little of that simple, trusting, unquestioning faith, which is the 'substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen'--little of that all-pervading and all-powerful reverence for sacred things, that deep religious feeling which forms a portion of the very life of most of the nations of the Old World. This is nothing more than the reaction of the stern Puritan tenets of the colonial times. It is the logical result of those dark and gloomy theories which aimed to make religion not only unpalatable but absolutely repelling to the young and the ardent, causing them to fly to the opposite extreme of throwing aside religion to 'a more convenient season,' when the pleasures of life should have lost their charm, and they themselves should be drawing near the close of their pilgrimage. That theory which made a deadly sin of that which was at worst but a pardonable misdemeanor and perhaps wholly innocent in its nature, could not fail in time to react violently, first through the process of disgust, then through that of inquiry, and finally to the carrying of speculation to extremes, and practically pronouncing harmless and innocent that which was really vice. The popular mind, rebounding from the Puritan ideas, did not pause to discriminate between the truth and error which were so intimately mingled in their system, but, sweepingly denouncing all the theories whose most prominent characteristics were revolting, involved in the denunciation and rejection much of pure and simple truth, and ran rapidly along the path of revolution, heedless of every warning, unchecked by the obstacles which Truth threw in its way, down to the present time of almost universal looseness.