The best practical receipt for a universal morality is, without doubt, to ask oneself whether an action, or course of action, _if adopted by every man_, would be useful or injurious to society. In the first case, it is of course good,--in the second, bad. Had Governments, and those upon whom devolves the sacred and neglected duty of instructing the people, habituated them to the constant application of this test or measure of conduct, and then demonstrated to them, directly, 'ad oculos,' the inevitable, ultimate reaction of evil conduct _on themselves_, they would, in the course of a few years, have improved not only the morality of the country, but its physical condition and commercial prosperity; whereas the ordinary priestly wisdom, which sets faith, authority, and dogma above everything, has left mankind in the same state for centuries,--if indeed it have not made them worse. It would, perhaps, do no harm occasionally to choose teachers who have been converted to virtue by experience of the evil consequences of vice (as, for instance, the late Werner,) and who are therefore best informed on the subject. Not only is there more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine just men, but such a man is more firm in his convictions and perceptions, and generally more zealous in reclaiming others, as the examples of many holy men prove. Above all, in every well-organized society all clergymen, be they of what persuasion they may, must, in my opinion, be paid by fixed salary, and not be permitted to take money for every separate consolation of real, or ceremony of conventional, religion;--a meanness which necessarily destroys all true reverence for the priest, and which must degrade him in his own eyes, if he have any delicacy. It is really dreadful to see the poor man stick his two _groschen_ behind the altar for the holy elements he has just received; or crowd a fee into the reverend gentleman's hand when his child is christened, just as if he were giving him a shilling to drink. But when we hear the parson storm and scold from the pulpit, because his offerings and tithes decrease; when we hear him announce such a falling-off in his revenues as a proof of the decline of religion; then, indeed, we feel distinctly why there are so many parsons, and what they themselves regard as their true and proper vocation. Soldiers naturally love war, and in like manner priests love religion,--for their own advantage. But patriots love war only as a means of obtaining freedom; and philosophers, religion only for its beauty and its truth. That is the difference.--But, as the author of the Zillah so truly says, "Establishments endure longer than opinions; the church outlasts the faith which founded it; and if a priesthood has once succeeded in interweaving itself with the institutions of the country, it may continue to subsist and to flourish long after its forms of worship is regarded with aversion and contempt."