
upon the tower were a party, I dare say, from the Corps de Garde, set there, not
only to look out, but to defend it. - They could be no more, an' please your
Honour, than a Corporal's Guard. - My father smiled inwardly, - but not
outwardly; - the subject between my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim being rather
too serious, considering what had happened, to make a jest of: - So putting his
pipe into his mouth, which he had just lighted, - he contented himself with
ordering Trim to read on. He read on as follows:]
    To have the fear of God before our eyes, and, in our mutual dealings with
each other, to govern our actions by the eternal measures of right and wrong: -
The first of these will comprehend the duties of religion; - the second, those
of morality, which are so inseparably connected together, that you cannot divide
these two tables, even in imagination (tho' the attempt is often made in
practice) without breaking and mutually destroying them both.
    I said the attempt is often made, and so it is; -- there being nothing more
common than to see a man who has no sense at all of religion, - and indeed has
so much honesty as to pretend to none, who would take it as the bitterest
affront, should you but hint at a suspicion of his moral character, - or imagine
he was not conscientiously just and scrupulous to the uttermost mite.
    When there is some appearance that it is so, - tho' one is unwilling even to
suspect the appearance of so amiable a virtue as moral honesty, yet were we to
look into the grounds of it, in the present case, I am persuaded we should find
little reason to envy such a one the honour of his motive.
    Let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the subject, it will be
found to rest upon no better foundation than either his interest, his pride, his
ease, or some such little and changeable passion as will give us but small
dependence upon his actions in matters of great stress.
    I will illustrate this by an example.
    I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I usually call in,« [There
is no need, cried Dr. Slop, (waking) to call in any physician in this case] »to
be neither of them men of much religion: I hear them make a jest of it every
day, and treat all its sanctions with so much scorn, as to put the matter past
doubt
