Soon after he had settled in London, the fruit of his studies in Rhode Island was given to the world in the Seven Dialogues of _Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher_. Here the philosophical inspiration of his early years is directed to sustain faith in Divine Moral Order, and in the Christian Revelation. _Alciphron_ is the longest, and in literary form perhaps the most finished of his works, unsurpassed in lively strokes of irony and satire. Yet if it is to be regarded as a philosophical justification of religion, as against modern agnosticism, one may incline to the judgment of Mr. Leslie Stephen, that it is “the least admirable of all its author’s admirable works.” As we have seen, the sect of free-thinkers was early the object of Berkeley’s ridicule and sarcasm. They claimed for themselves wide intellectual vision, yet they were blind to the deep realities of the universe; they took exclusive credit for freedom of thought, although their thinking was confined within the narrow compass of our data in sense. The book of _Principles_, the _Dialogues_, and the _De Motu_ of his early years, were designed to bring into clear light the absolute dependence of the world that is presented to our senses on Omnipresent Spirit; and the necessary subjection of all changes in our surroundings to the immediate agency or providence of God. Boasted “free-thinking” was really a narrow atheism, so he believed, in which meaningless Matter usurped the place that belonged in reason to God, and he employed reason to disclose Omnipotent Intelligence in and behind the phenomena that are presented to the senses in impotent natural sequence. The causes of the widespread moral corruption of the Old World, which had moved Berkeley so profoundly, seem to have been pondered anew during his recluse life in Rhode Island. The decline of morals was explained by the deification of Matter: consequent life of sensuous pleasure accounted for decay of religion. That vice is hurtful was argued by free-thinkers like Mandeville to be a vulgar error, and a fallacious demonstration was offered of its utility. That virtue is intrinsically beautiful was taught by Shaftesbury; but Berkeley judged the abstract beauty, with which “minute philosophers” were contented, unfit to move ordinary human beings to self-sacrificing action; for this involves devotion to a Perfect Person by whom goodness is finally distributed. Religion alone inspires the larger and higher life, in presenting distributive justice personified on the throne of the universe, instead of abstract virtue.