The great change—­the great improvement, I would say—­which has taken place during the last half-century in the feelings and practical relations of religion with social life is, that it has become more diffused through all ranks and all characters.  Before that period many good sort of people were afraid of making their religious views very prominent, and were always separated from those who did.  Persons who made a profession at all beyond the low standard generally adopted in society were marked out as objects of fear or of distrust.  The anecdote at page 65 regarding the practice of family prayer fully proves this.  Now religious people and religion itself are not kept aloof from the ordinary current of men’s thoughts and actions.  There is no such marked line as used to be drawn round persons who make a decided profession of religion.  Christian men and women have stepped over the line, and, without compromising their Christian principle, are not necessarily either morose, uncharitable, or exclusive.  The effects of the old separation were injurious to men’s minds.  Religion was with many associated with puritanism, with cant, and unfitness for the world.  The difference is marked also in the style of sermons prevalent at the two periods.  There were sermons of two descriptions—­viz., sermons by “moderate” clergy, of a purely moral or practical character; and sermons purely doctrinal, from those who were known as “evangelical” ministers.  Hence arose an impression, and not unnaturally, on many minds, that an almost exclusive reference to doctrinal subjects, and a dread of upholding the law, and of enforcing its more minute details, were not favourable to the cause of moral rectitude and practical holiness of life.  This was hinted in a sly way by a young member of the kirk to his father, a minister of the severe and high Calvinistic school.  Old Dr. Lockhart of Glasgow was lamenting one day, in the presence of his son John, the fate of a man who had been found guilty of immoral practices, and the more so that he was one of his own elders.  “Well, father,” remarked his son, “you see what you’ve driven him to.”  In our best Scottish preaching at the present day no such distinction is visible.

The same feeling came forth with much point and humour on an occasion referred to in “Carlyle’s Memoirs.”  In a company where John Home and David Hume were present, much wonder was expressed what could have induced a clerk belonging to Sir William Forbes’ bank to abscond, and embezzle L900.  “I know what it was,” said Home to the historian; “for when he was taken there was found in his pocket a volume of your philosophical works and Boston’s ‘Fourfold State’”—­a hit, 1st, at the infidel, whose principles would have undermined Christianity; and 2d, a hit at the Church, which he was compelled to leave on account of his having written the tragedy of Douglas.