"I hope," said Mr. Cole, "you will never go again, for evil communications corrupt the best of hearts."
"Go again!" exclaimed Mrs. Denham, "not if she have any respect for her own happiness, or ours. Why, to hear this about the sermon is enough to frighten any good Christian; what must it have been to have heard the sermon itself! One thing puzzles me when I think about it—why do our bishops consecrate such men?"
"Oh, unluckily we have some evangelical bishops."
"A bishop evangelical! don't you consider that a great wonder, Sir?"
"I consider it a great calamity to our church."
"Exactly so; then I suppose we shall always be annoyed with these evangelical clergy if the bishops sanction them. I hope you won't turn evangelical."
"Not while I retain my reason. When that is gone, I may go off too."
My readers who are but superficially acquainted with the religious habits and style of conversation which prevail in the higher walks of life, may be induced to imagine that I have given a strong colouring to some parts of my narrative, but I assure them that I have not. Indeed, had I quoted the epithets and the phrases which, I know, are sometimes employed, when a certain class of fashionable Christians, with their anti-evangelical pastors, venture to discuss religious subjects, and animadvert on religious people, my pages would be too disfigured to pass through the hands of the pious reader.
It is to be lamented that many intelligent and amiable persons, who occupy very prominent positions amongst us, and who are admired and esteemed by all who know them, are as ignorant of the nature and the design of Christianity as the ancient Scythian or the modern barbarian. They imagine that they are Christians, because they are born in a Christian country; that they are very good Christians, because they sometimes go to church; and that they are safe for another world, because their conscience does not condemn them for the practices in which they now indulge themselves. And if any one, in the most guarded way and the kindest tones of speech, venture to suggest the possibility of self-deception, they are offended, or take refuge in the belief that their hearts are too good to be guilty of such a mean vice. They keep to the religion in which they were born and educated; and this to them is the ark of safety.