But we are not all Peels. And
there are plenty of workshops and offices and dinner-tables in our own
city, where young men who would walk up to the cannon's mouth without
flinching have not had Peel's courage to protest against indecency or to
confess that they belonged to an evangelical church. If a church is only
sufficiently unevangelical there is no trial of conscience or of courage
in confessing that you belong to it. But as Shame so ably and honestly
said, that type of religion that creates a tender conscience in its
followers, and sets them to watch their words and their ways, and makes
them tie themselves up from all hectoring liberty--to choose that
religion, and to cleave to it to the end, will make a young man the
ridicule still of all the brave spirits round about him. Ambitious young
men get promotion and reward every day among us for desertions and
apostasies in religion, for which, if they had been guilty of the like in
war, they would have been shot. 'And so you are a Free Churchman, I am
told.' That was all that was said. But the sharp youth understood
without any more words, and he made his choice accordingly; till it is
becoming a positive surprise to find the rising members of certain
professions in certain churches.
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