/ 
conscientiousness is growing faint among us. Our growing 
habit of “thinking in masses/' has drawn forth even from 
Mr. Mill a timely protest in behalf of some individuality. 
We may trace dimness of conscience in the growing lack of 
interest in all elevated and difficult thought, among effeminate 
multitudes in the upper ranks of life, — their indisposition to 
what is real, and their fear of all plain-speaking, even in social 
intercourse. There seems to be a prevailing self-distrust, 
combined with uneasy self-assertion ; and the feeling which is 
being generated is one of common scepticism, (though it may 
attempt a refined appearance of humility) : And scepticism in 
its ethical results effects a sort of suspension of responsibility. 
( — And is there not the same timidity, and destruction of indi- 
vidual manhood , spreading in our trading community ? — ) 
7. Nor is the enfeebled sense of right and wrong, and of 
the obligations of the individual, less conspicuous in matters 
of Religion than in Ethics generally. The public 
treatment of ecclesiastical questions among us, and classes^ men! 
the rareness of all attempts to know the founda- 
tions even of our own convictions, are evidences of our moral 
condition as a people. For in so noticeable a phenomenon of 
our times as the change of hereditary Religions, by thousands 
of our people, for new forms of worship, the converts from 
faith to faith have but acted in crowds, and the change has 
signified, not un frequently, a formal surrender of individual judg- 
ment ; in which conscience itself is repudiated as “ private." 
It would seem unnecessary, then, at a moral crisis like the 
present, to excuse an earnest attempt to call men to examine 
their moral foundations : it is needless to say more in its 
general defence. It must, however, be added with Need there _ 
special significance that all who hereafter profess fore, of this 
themselves to be “ Christians," will find it to be cJn“ientioSs°- f 
in truth a primary obligation to vindicate the laws ness * 
of Duty, and the inseparable relations of Religion and 
Morality in the human economy ; and to base their vindica- 
tion on the most careful induction of the facts of our nature 
as men. 
II. 
8. As soon as we pronounce this word Duty, meaning that 
which ought to be, we contemplate future action : yet the idea 
expressed by “ ought " has inherent reference to some ante- 
cedent; in other words, what “ ought to be " must be 
based on “what is." But, obviously, we cannot 0utline * 
