When, then, is the question to be asked, 'What shall I do
to inherit eternal life?' what leisure for the altar, what time for
God? I appeal to the experience of men engaged in this profession,
whether religious feelings and religious practices are not, without
any speculative disbelief, perpetually sacrificed to the business of
the world? Are not the habits of devotion gradually displaced by other
habits of solicitude, hurry, and care? Is not the taste for devotion
lessened? Is not the time for devotion abridged? Are you not more and
more conquered against your warnings and against your will; not,
perhaps, without pain and compunction, by the Mammon of life? And what
is the cure for this great evil to which your profession exposes you?
The cure is, to keep a sacred place in your heart, where Almighty God
is enshrined, and where nothing human can enter; to say to the world,
'Thus far shalt thou go, and no further'; to remember you are a
lawyer, without forgetting you are a Christian; to wish for no more
wealth than ought to be possessed by an inheritor of the Kingdom of
Heaven; to covet no more honour than is suitable to a child of God;
boldly and bravely to set yourself limits, and to show to others you
have limits, and that no professional eagerness, and no professional
activity, shall ever induce you to infringe upon the rules and
practices of religion: remember the text; put the great question
really, which the tempter of Christ only pretended to put.
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