may have over me, there is one thing he shall not do; he
shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being
good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my
fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to
hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.'

This concluding declaration is memorable in many ways. Mr Mill announces
his resolution to determine for himself, and according to his own reason
and conscience, what God he will worship, and what God he will not
worship. For ourselves, we cordially sympathize with his resolution. But
Mr Mill must be aware that this is a point on which society is equally
resolved that no individual shall determine for himself, if they can
help it.[6] Each new-born child finds his religious creed ready
prepared for him. In his earliest days of unconscious infancy, the stamp
of the national, gentile, phratric, God, or Gods, is imprinted upon him
by his elders; and if the future man, in the exercise of his own
independent reason, acquires such convictions as compel him to renounce
those Gods, proclaiming openly that he does so--he must count upon such
treatment as will go far to spoil the value of the present life to him,
even before he passes to those ulterior liabilities which Mr Mill
indicates in the distance. We are not surprised that a declaration so
unusual and so impressive should have been often cited in critical
notices of this volume; that during the month preceding the last
Westminster election, it was studiously brought forward by some
opponents of Mr Mill, and more or less regretted by his friends, as
likely to offend many electors, and damage his chance of success; and
that a conspicuous and noble-minded ecclesiastic, the Dean of
Westminster, thought the occasion so grave as to come forward with his
characteristic generosity, for the purpose of shielding a distinguished
man suspected of heresy.