The good rector joined the party at dinner. The conversation afterward happened to turn on the value of human opinion, and Sir John Belfield made the hackneyed observation, that the desire of obtaining it should never be discouraged, it being highly useful as a motive of action.

"Yes," said Dr. Barlow, "it certainly has its uses in a world, the affairs of which must be chiefly carried on by worldly men; a world which is itself governed by low motives. But human applause is not a Christian principle of action; nay, it is so adverse to Christianity that our Saviour himself assigns it as a powerful cause of men's not believing, or at least not confessing Him; because they loved the praise of men. The eager desire of fame is a sort of separation line between Paganism and Christianity. The ancient philosophers have left us many shining examples of moderation in earthly things, and of the contempt of riches. So far the light of reason, and a noble self-denial carried them; and many a Christian may blush at these instances of their superiority; but of an indifference to fame, of a deadness to human applause except as founded on loftiness of spirit, disdain of their judges, and self-sufficient pride, I do not recollect any instance."

"And yet," said Sir John, "I remember Seneca says in one of his epistles, that no man expresses such a respect and devotion to virtue as he who forfeits the repute of being a good man, that he may not forfeit the conscience of being such."

"They might," replied Mr. Stanley, "incidentally express some such sentiment, in a well turned period, to give antithesis to an expression, or weight to an apothegm; they might declaim against it in a fit of disappointment in the burst of indignation excited by a recent loss of popularity; but I question if they ever once acted upon it. I question if Marius himself, sitting amid the ruins of Carthage, actually felt it. Seldom, if ever, does it seem to have been inculcated as a principle, or enforced as a rule of action: nor could it—it was against the canon law of their foundation."

"Yet," said Sir John, "a good man struggling with adversity is, I think, represented by one of their authors as an object worthy of the attention of the gods."

"Yes," said Mr. Stanley, "but the divine approbation alone was never proposed as the standard of right, or the reward of actions, except by divine revelation."

"Nothing seems more difficult," said I, "to settle than the standard of right. Every man has a standard of his own, which he considers as of universal application. One makes his own tastes, desires, and appetites, his rule of right; another the example of certain individuals, fallible like himself; a third, and indeed the generality, the maxims, habits, and manners of the fashionable part of the world."

Sir John remarked, "That since it is so difficult to discriminate between allowable indulgence and criminal conformity, the life of a conscientious man, if he be not constitutionally temperate, or habitually firm, must be poisoned with solicitude, and perpetually racked with the fear of exceeding his limits."

"My dear Belfield," replied Mr. Stanley, "the peace and security of a Christian, we well know, are not left to depend on constitutional temperance, or habitual firmness. These are, as the young Numidian says,

There is a higher and surer way to prevent the solicitude, which is, by correcting the principle; to get the heart set right; to be jealous over ourselves; to be careful never to venture to the edge of our lawful limits; in short, and that is the only infallible standard, to live in the conscientious practice of measuring all we say, and do, and think, by the unerring rule of God's word."

"The impossibility of reaching the perfection which that rule requires," said Sir John, "sometimes discourages well-meaning men, as if the attempt were hopeless."

Dr. Barlow replied, "That is, sir, because they take up with a hearsay Christianity. Its reputed pains and penalties drive them off from inquiring for themselves. They rest on the surface. If they would go deeper, they would see that the Spirit which dictated the Scriptures is a Spirit of power, as well as a Spirit of promise. All that he requires us to do, he enables us to perform. He does not prescribe 'rules' without furnishing us with 'arms.'"

In answer to some further remarks of Sir John, who spoke with due abhorrence of any instance of actual vice, but who seemed to have no just idea of its root and principle, Dr. Barlow observed: "While every one agrees in reprobating wicked actions, few, comparatively, are aware of the natural and habitual evil which lurks in the heart. To this the Bible particularly directs our attention. In describing a bad character, it does not say that his actions are flagitious, but that 'God is not in all his thoughts.' This is the description of a thoroughly worldly man. Those who are given up completely to the world, to its maxims, its principles, its cares, or its pleasures, can not entertain thoughts of God. And to be unmindful of his providence, to be regardless of his presence, to be insensible to his mercies, must be nearly as offensive to him as to deny his existence. Excessive dissipation, a supreme love of money, or an entire devotedness to ambition, drinks up that spirit, swallows up that affection, exhausts that vigor, starves that zeal, with which a Christian should devote himself to serve his Maker.

"Pray observe," continued Dr. Barlow, "that I am not speaking of avowed profligates, but of decent characters; men who, while they are pursuing with keen intenseness the great objects of their attachment, do not deride or even totally neglect religious observances, yet think they do much and well, by affording some odd scraps of refuse time to a few weary prayers, and sleepy thoughts, from a mind worn down with engagements of pleasure, or projects of accumulation, or schemes of ambition. In all these several pursuits, there may be nothing which, to the gross perceptions of the world, would appear to be moral turpitude. The pleasure may not be profligacy, the wealth so cherished may not have been fraudulently obtained, the ambition, in human estimation, may not be dishonorable; but an alienation from God, an indifference to eternal things, a spirit incompatible with the spirit of the gospel, will be found at the bottom of all these restless pursuits."

"I am entirely of your opinion, Doctor," said Mr. Stanley; "it is taking up with something short of real Christianity; it is an apostacy from the doctrines of the Bible; it is the substitution of a spurious and popular religion for that which was revealed from heaven; it is a departure from the faith once delivered to the saints, that has so fatally sunk our morality; and given countenance to that low standard of practical virtue which prevails. If we lower the principle, if we obscure the light, if we reject the influence, if we sully the purity, if we abridge the strictness of the divine law, there will remain no ascending power in the soul, no stirring spirit, no quickening aspiration after perfection, no stretching forward after that holiness to which the beatific vision is specifically promised. It is vain to expect that the practice will rise higher than the principle which inspires it; that the habits will be superior to the motives which govern them."

"Selfishness, security, and sensuality," said the Doctor, "are predicted by our Saviour, as the character of the last times. In alluding to the antediluvian world, and the cause of its destruction, eating, drinking, and marrying could not be named in the gospel as things censurable in themselves, they being necessary to the very existence of that world which the abuse of them was tending to destroy. Our Saviour does not describe criminality by the excess, but by the spirit of the act. He speaks of eating, not gluttony; of drinking, not intoxication; of marriage, not licentious intercourse. This seems a plain intimation, that carrying on the transactions of the world in the spirit of the world, and that habitual deadness to the concerns of eternity, in beings so alive to the pleasures or the interests of the present moment, do not indicate a state of safety, even where gross acts of vice may be rare."

Mr. Stanley said it was his opinion that it is not by a few, or even by many, instances of excessive wickedness, that the moral state of a country is to be judged, but by a general averseness and indifference to real religion. "A few examples of glaring impiety," said he, "may furnish more subject for declamation, but are not near so deadly a symptom. It is no new remark, that more men are undone by an excessive indulgence in things permitted, than by the commission of avowed sins."

"How happy," said Sir John, "are those who by their faith and piety are delivered from these difficulties!"

"My dear Belfield," replied Mr. Stanley, "where are those privileged beings? It is one sad proof of human infirmity, that the best men have continually these things to struggle with. What makes the difference is, that those whom we call good men struggle on to the end, while the others, not seeing the danger, do not struggle at all."

"Christians," said Dr. Barlow, "who would strictly keep within the bounds prescribed by their religion, should imitate the ancient Romans, who carefully watched that their god Terminus, who defined their limits, should never recede; the first step of his retreat, they said, would be the destruction of their security."

"But, Doctor," said Sir John, "pray what remedy do you recommend against this natural, I had almost said this invincible, propensity to over-value the world? I do not mean a propensity merely to over-rate its pleasures and its honors, but a disposition to yield to its dominion over the mind, to indulge a too earnest desire of standing well with it, to cherish a too anxious regard for its good opinion?"

"The knowledge of the disease," replied the worthy Doctor, "should precede the application of the remedy. Human applause is, by a worldly man, reckoned not only among the luxuries of life, but among articles of the first necessity. An undue desire to obtain it has certainly its foundation in vanity; and it is one of our grand errors to reckon vanity a trivial fault. An over-estimation of character, and an anxious wish to conciliate all suffrages, is an infirmity from which even worthy men are not exempt; nay, it is a weakness from which, if they are not governed by a strict religious principle, worthy men are in most danger. Reputation being in itself so very desirable a good, those who actually possess it, and in some sense deserve to possess it, are apt to make it their standard, and to rest in it as their supreme aim and end."

"You have," said Sir John, "exposed the latent principle; it remains that you suggest its cure."

"I believe," said Dr. Barlow, "that the most effectual remedy would be, to excite in the mind frequent thoughts of our divine Redeemer, and of his estimate of that world on which we so fondly set our affections, and whose approbation we are too apt to make the chief object of our ambition."

"I allow it to have been necessary," replied Sir John, "that Christ, in the great end which he had to accomplish, should have been poor, and neglected, and contemned, and that he should have trampled on the great things of this world, human applause among the rest; but I do not conceive that this obligation extends to his followers, nor that we are called upon to partake the poverty which he preferred, or to renounce the wealth and grandeur which he set at naught, or to imitate him in making himself of no reputation."

"It is true," said the Doctor, "we are not called to resemble him in his external circumstances. It is not our bounden duty to be necessarily exposed to the same contempt; nor are we obliged to embrace the same ignominy. Yet it seems a natural consequence of our Christian profession, that the things which he despised, we should not venerate; the vanities he trampled on, we should not admire; the world which he censured, we ought not to idolize; the ease which he renounced, we should not rate too highly; the fame which he set at naught, we ought not anxiously to covet. Surely, the followers of him who was 'despised and rejected of men' should not seek their highest gratification from the flattery and applause of men. The truth is, in all discourses on this subject, we are compelled continually to revert to the observation, that Christianity is a religion of the heart. And though we are not called upon to partake the poverty and meanness of his situation, yet the precept is clear and direct, respecting the temper by which we should be governed: 'Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.' If, therefore, we happen to possess that wealth and grandeur which he disdained, we should possess them as though we possessed them not. We have a fair and liberal permission to use them as his gift, and to his glory, but not to erect them into the supreme objects of our attachment. In the same manner, in every other point, it is still the spirit of the act, the temper of the mind, to which we are to look. For instance, I do not think that I am obliged to show my faith by sacrificing my son, nor my obedience by selling all that I have, to give to the poor; but I think I am bound by the spirit of these two powerful commands, to practice a cheerful acquiescence in the whole will of God, in suffering and renouncing as well as in doing, when I know what is really his will."