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but supplies motives derived from the invisible also, and there 

 can be no doubt that these two together are calculated to be of 

 more force than one of them alone. 



But Miss Bevington, in dwelling upon the little power which 

 religion has to improve the generality of those who acknow- 

 ledge the Deity, seems entirely to ignore that class of believers 

 who are what we call true Christicms. That there are too 

 many who, while intellectually acknowledging God, yet act as 

 though they disbelieved His existence, and seldom or never 

 give Him a thought, is a melancholy fact, and one which the 

 Sci"iptures fully recognise. But there is also a large class of 

 them — though, it is to be feared, not so large — who '' set God 

 always before them,^^ remembering that He is ever pi'esent, 

 and that He watches over all that they do or think ; loving to 

 do His pleasure, and careful to avoid whatever may be dis- 

 pleasing to Him ; recognising His authority, and looking to 

 the reward held out to those who endeavour to follow Christ^s 

 example. These are not free from imperfections ; temptations 

 may at times get the better of them, and the hopes and allure- 

 ments of this life may occasionally obscure their visions of the 

 world to come. But their course, notwithstanding occasional, 

 or even frequent, deviations, is heavenly, and many of them 

 have shown that they are ready to endure pain and imprison- 

 ment, yea, to suffer death itself, for the sake of Christ, who 

 suffered and died for them. These would be among the last 

 to say they are perfect, but they trust that their imperfections 

 and sins will be washed away in the blood of the atonement. 

 This is a class of persons which seems to be entirely left out 

 of sight by those who say that religion is no help to morality. 

 As long as there are true Christians in the world, so long will 

 it be evident that such a position is false. Let unbelievers say 

 what they will, such as these are " the salt of the earth," and 

 if they were not living examples of what religion can do in 

 promoting love to our neighbours, which lies at the root of 

 practical morality, it seems quite possible that belief in 

 religion might become a thing of the past. 



I would just notice one other statement of Miss Bevington^s, 

 in the articles contributed by her to the Nineteenth Century. 

 It is this : that the requisites to an action being virtuous 

 are: — 1. That it should be useful; and 2. That it should bo 

 difficult. I think it is easy to show that these two charac- 

 teristics do not constitute the ground of virtue. We may 

 presume that Miss Bevington means to say that the action, in 

 order to be virtuous, should be done with the intention that it 

 should be useful ; and I think it may also be presumed that 

 by " useful," she does not mean useful to some, while it causes 



