Such, then, was the God of the worldly-minded, who would be grateful that he had organized the things of this world so that everything was in accorda… - Bernard Groethuysen

Nothing, then, would prevent him henceforth from living his life, a purely secular life, according to his nature and his habits, without having to ask himself at every moment whether what he had done was displeasing to God or not. And since he was no longer the sinner whose life, as soon as he acted by his own powers, was but sin, he would be able to enumerate separately the sins which he had committed on a particular occasion.

In the bourgeois' world, ... if some respect was shown to God, it was on condition that he in turn would respect the general laws governing the universe and refrain from acting contrary to the plans of the middle class, who used their reason and demanded their share in the governance of the world.

Did all these concerns in which the bourgeois was engaged really need external hallowing? They contained their own built-in standards, and the bourgeois was unwilling to recognize any other. If religion was to signify anything in his life, it would have to connect with that life itself, exalt the motives which determined it, not only tolerate them or approve them from a distance, but penetrate them and model itself on the very special morality which governed it.