I don't deny that there are spiritual laws which man is meant to obey- -How can I, who feel in my own daily and inexplicable unhappiness the fruits of having broken them ?--But I do say, that those spiritual laws must be in perfect harmony with every fresh physical law which we discover: that they cannot be intended to compete self-destructively with each other; that the spiritual cannot be intended to be perfected by ignoring or crushing the physical, unless God is a deceiver, and His universe a self-contradiction.

And by this test alone will I try all theories, and dogmas, and spiritualities whatsoever--Are they in accordance with the laws of nature?
And therefore when your party compare sneeringly Romish Sanctity, and English Civilisation, I say, "Take you the Sanctity, and give me the Civilisation!" The one may be a dream, for it is unnatural; the other cannot be, for it is natural; and not an evil in it at which you sneer but is discovered, day by day, to be owing to some infringement of the laws of nature.

When we "draw bills on nature," as Carlyle says, "she honours them,"-- our ships do sail; our mills do work; our doctors do cure; our soldiers do fight.

And she does not honour yours; for your Jesuits have, by their own confession, to lie, to swindle, to get even man to accept theirs for them.

So give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles.