L. Mind, I say your “feelings,” not your “belief.”  For I cannot undertake to explain anybody’s beliefs.  Still I must try a little, first, to explain the belief also, because I want to draw it to some issue.  As far as I understand what you say, or any one else, taught as you have been taught, says, on this matter,—­you think that there is an external goodness, a whited-sepulcher kind of goodness, which appears beautiful outwardly, but is within full of uncleanness:  a deep secret guilt, of which we ourselves are not sensible; and which can only be seen by the Maker of us all.  (Approving murmurs from audience.)

L. Is it not so with the body as well as the soul?

(Looked notes of interrogation.)

L. A skull, for instance, is not a beautiful thing? (Grave faces, signifying “Certainly not,” and “What next?”)

L. And if you all could see in each other, with clear eyes, whatever God sees beneath those fair faces of yours, you would not like it?

(Murmured No’s.)

L. Nor would it be good for you?

(Silence.)

L. The probability being that what God does not allow you to see,
He does not wish you to see; nor even to think of?

(Silence prolonged.)

L. It would not at all be good for you, for instance, whenever you were washing your faces, and braiding your hair, to be thinking of the shapes of the jawbones, and of the cartilage of the nose, and of the jagged sutures of the scalp?

(Resolutely whispered No’s.)

L. Still less, to see through a clear glass the daily processes of nourishment and decay?

(No.)

L. Still less if instead of merely inferior and preparatory conditions of structure, as in the skeleton,—­or inferior offices of structure, as in operations of life and death,—­there were actual disease in the body, ghastly and dreadful.  You would try to cure it; but having taken such measures as were necessary, you would not think the cure likely to be promoted by perpetually watching the wounds, or thinking of them.  On the contrary, you would be thankful for every moment of forgetfulness:  as, in daily health, you must be thankful that your Maker has veiled whatever is fearful in your frame under a sweet and manifest beauty; and has made it your duty, and your only safety, to rejoice in that, both in yourself and in others;—­not indeed concealing, or refusing to believe in sickness, if it come; but never dwelling on it.

Now, your wisdom and duty touching soul-sickness are just the same.  Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you; and so far as you know any means of mending it, take those means, and have done; when you are examining yourself, never call yourself merely a “sinner,” that is very cheap abuse; and utterly useless.  You may even get to like it, and be proud of it.  But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an evil-eyed, jealous wretch, if you indeed