slated into religious terms the laissez faire premise that every man was the best arbiter of his own conduct once he was illuminated by the Truth (173). The Bible, interpreted with the utmost literalism, was the supreme guide to conduct. The conduct of one's daily life was of utmost importance in qualifying the soul for eternity (Altick 165). Salvation was regarded as the goal of all earthly action, and divine grace the means by which it could be earned. Thus, Evangelicalism complemented the individualism of laissez faire by stressing the importance of the private conscience instead of theological drama. It was essentially a religion of private initiative (Altick 173).
Altick, therefore, states that the Evangelical's anxious eye was forever fixed upon the "eternal microscope" that searched for every moral blemish and reported every motion of the soul. In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy demonstrates this "soul-searching" through the physical and moral
...