2. 'What religion is he of?' asks Dean Swift. 'He is an Anythingarian,' is the answer, 'for he makes his self-interest the sole standard of his life and doctrine.' And Archbishop Leighton, a very different churchman from the bitter author of the _Polite Conversations_, is equally contemptuous toward the self-seeker in divine things. 'Your boasted peaceableness often proceeds from a superficial temper; and, not seldom, from a supercilious disdain of whatever has no marketable use or value, and from your utter indifference to true religion. Toleration is an herb of spontaneous growth in the soil of indifference. Much of our union of minds proceeds from want of knowledge and from want of affection to religion. Many who boast of their church conformity, and that no one hears of their noise, may thank the ignorance of their minds for that kind of quietness.' But by far the most powerful assault that ever was made upon lukewarmness in religion and upon self-seeking in the Church was delivered by Dante in the tremendous third canto of his _Inferno_:--
Various tongues, Horrible languages, outcries of woe, Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse, With hands together smote that swelled the sounds, Made up a tumult that for ever whirls Round through that air with solid darkness stain'd, Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies. I then, with error yet encompass'd, cried, 'O master! What is this I hear? What race Are these, who seem so overcome with woe?' He then to me: 'This miserable fate Suffer the wretched souls of those who lived Without or praise or blame, with that ill band Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved, Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves Were only. Mercy and Justice scorn them both. Speak not of them, but look and pass them by.' Forthwith, I understood for certain this the tribe Of those ill spirits both to God displeasing And to His foes. Those wretches who ne'er lived, Went on in nakedness, and sorely stung By wasps and hornets, which bedewed their cheeks With blood, that mix'd with tears dropp'd to their feet, And by disgustful worms was gathered there.
3. Now, we must all lay it continually and with uttermost humiliation to heart that we all have Captain Anything's opportunism, his self-interest, his insincerity, his instability, and his secret deceitfulness in ourselves. That man knows little of himself who does not despise and hate himself for his secret self-seeking even in the service of God. For, how the love of praise will seduce and corrupt this man, and the love of gain that man! How easy it is to flatter and adulate this man out of all his former opinions and his deepest principles, and how an expected advantage will make that other man forget now an old alliance and now a deep antipathy! How often the side we take even in the most momentous matters is decided by the most unworthy motives and the most contemptible considerations! Unstable as water, Reuben shall not excel. Double-minded men, we, like Jacob's first-born, are unstable in all our ways. We have no anchor, or, what anchor we sometimes have soon slips. We have no fixed pole-star by which to steer our life. Any will-o'-the-wisp of pleasure, or advantage, or praise will run us on the rocks. The searchers of Mansoul, after long search, at last lighted on Anything, and soon made an end of him. Seek him out in your own soul also. Be you sure he is somewhere there. He is skulking somewhere there. And, having found him, if you cannot on the spot make an end of him, keep your eye on him, and never say that you are safe from him and his company as long as you are in this soul-deceiving life. And, that Anything will not be let enter the gates of the city you are set on seeking, that will go largely to make that sweet and clean and truthful city your very heaven to you.