The English people are satisfied that to the great the
consolations of religion are as necessary as its instructions. They,
too, are among the unhappy. They feel personal pain and domestic
sorrow. In these they have no privilege, but are subject to pay
their full contingent to the contributions levied on mortality. They
want this sovereign balm under their gnawing cares and anxieties,
which, being less conversant about the limited wants of animal life,
range without limit, and are diversified by infinite combinations,
in the wild and unbounded regions of imagination. Some charitable dole
is wanting to these our often very unhappy brethren to fill the gloomy
void that reigns in minds which have nothing on earth to hope or fear;
something to relieve in the killing languor and overlabored
lassitude of those who have nothing to do; something to excite an
appetite to existence in the palled satiety which attends on all
pleasures which may be bought where nature is not left to her own
process, where even desire is anticipated, and therefore fruition
defeated by meditated schemes and contrivances of delight; and no
interval, no obstacle, is interposed between the wish and the
accomplishment.
The people of England know how little influence the teachers of
religion are likely to have with the wealthy and powerful of long
standing, and how much less with the newly fortunate, if they appear
in a manner no way assorted to those with whom they must associate,
and over whom they must even exercise, in some cases, something like
an authority.
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