The English prejudice against Franklin on religious grounds is quite unreasonable. He was suspected of being a Freethinker, and was professedly a philosopher and man of science; he was a friend of Tom Paine and other dreadful persons; he had actually published “An Abridgment of the Church Prayer-Book,” dedicated “to the serious and discerning,” by the use of which he had the audacity to suppose that religion would be furthered, unanimity increased, and a more frequent attendance on the worship of God secured. Any one of these charges was sufficient to ruin a man’s religious reputation in respectable England of the last generation, but it is high time that amends were made in these days. Let us glance at the real facts. As a boy, Franklin had the disease which all thoughtful boys have to pass through, and puzzled himself with speculations as to the attributes of God and the existence of evil, which landed him in the conclusion that nothing could possibly be wrong in the world, and that vice and virtue were empty distinctions. These views he published at the mature age of nineteen, but became disgusted with them almost immediately, and abandoned metaphysics for other more satisfactory studies. Living in the eighteenth century, when happiness was held to be “our being’s end and aim,” he seems to have now conformed to that popular belief; but as he came also to the conclusion that “the felicity of life” was to be attained through “truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealings between man and man,” and acted up to this conclusion, no great objection from a moral or religious standpoint can be taken to this stage of his development. At the age of twenty-two he composed a little liturgy for his own use, which he fell back on when the sermons of the minister of the only Presbyterian church in Philadelphia had driven him from attendance at chapel. He did not, however, long remain unattached, and after his marriage joined the Church of England, in which he remained till the end of his life. What his sentiments were in middle life may be gathered from his advice to his daughter on the eve of his third departure for England: “Go constantly to church, whoever preaches. The act of devotion in the Common Prayer-Book is your principle business there, and if properly attended to will do more toward amending the heart than sermons.... I do not mean you should despise sermons, even of the preachers you dislike, for the discourse is often much better than the man, as sweet and clear waters come through very dirty earth. I am the more particular on this head as you seem to express some inclination to leave our church, which I would not have you do.” As an old man of eighty, he reminded his colleagues of the National Convention (in moving unsuccessfully that there should be daily prayers before business) how in the beginnings of the contest with Britain “we had daily prayers in this room.... Do we imagine we no longer need assistance? I have lived now a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God rules in the affairs of men.” Later yet, in answer to President Yates, of Yale College, who had pressed him on the subject, he writes, at the age of eighty-four: “Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe; that he governs it by his providence; that he ought to be worshipped; that the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children; that the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.” These are his “fundamentals,” beyond which he believes that Christ’s system of morals and religion is the best the world is ever likely to see, though it has been much corrupted. To another friend he speaks with cheerful courage of death, which “I shall submit to with less regret as, having seen during a long life a good deal of this world, I feel a growing curiosity to be acquainted with some other; and can cheerfully, with filial confidence, resign my spirit to the conduct of that great and good Parent of mankind who has so graciously protected and prospered me from my birth to the present hour.” One more quotation we cannot resist; it is his farewell letter to his old friend David Hartley: “I cannot quit the coasts of Europe without taking leave of my old friend. We were long fellow-laborers in the best of all works, the work of peace. I leave you still in the field, but, having finished my day’s task, I am going home to bed. Wish me a good night’s rest, as I do you a pleasant evening. Adieu, and believe me ever yours most affectionately,—B. Franklin.”

As to his relations with Paine, they should have reassured instead of frightened the orthodox, for he did his best to keep the author of “The Rights of Man” from publishing his speculations. Franklin advises him that he will do himself mischief and no benefit to others. “He who spits against the wind, spits in his own face.” Paine is probably indebted to religion “for the habits of virtue on which you so justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank amongst our most distinguished authors. For among us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.”