As for the others, whose mental and moral convictions are at variance, they have neither any heart to proclaim the one, nor any intellectual standpoint from which to proclaim the other.

Their only impulse is to struggle and to endure in silence.

Let us, however, try to intrude upon their privacy, even though it be rudely and painfully, and see what their real state is; for it is these men who are the true product of the present age, its most special and distinguishing feature, and the first-fruits of what we are told is to be the philosophy of the enlightened future.
To begin, then, let us remember what these men were when Christians; and we shall be better able to realise what they are now.

They were men who believed firmly in the supreme and solemn importance of life, in the privilege that it was to live, despite all temporal sorrow.

They had a rule of conduct which would guide them, they believed, to the true end of their being--to an existence satisfying and excellent beyond anything that imagination could suggest to them; they had the dread of a corresponding ruin to fortify themselves in their struggle against the wrong; and they had a God ever present, to help and hear, and take pity on them.