cesses carried on against individuals. During the reign of Majesty, who purchases them from the pope, and retails them Don Carlos IV., the prime minister, Caballero, sent a circular to his loving subjects.* Equally great are the encroachments to all the universities, forbidding the study of moral philo- which superstition has made on the time of the inhabitants. sophy, "because what his majesty wanted was, not philoso- Benedict XIV. reduced the number of holydays in the states phers, but loyal subjects." Even natural philosophy, in its of the church, and recommended a similar reduction in other various branches, was placed under the same trammels, and kingdoms. But in Spain there are still ninety-three general the Copernican system is still taught in that country as an festivals, besides those of particular provinces, parishes and hypothesis. Medical science is neglected; and surgeons, convents; to which we must add the bull-feasts, and the before entering on practice, are obliged to swear, not that Mondays claimed by apprentices and journeymen. they will exercise the healing art with fidelity, but that they Commerce and all the sources of national wealth are obwill defend the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin. structed by persecution and intolerance. But the evil is The great events which distinguished the reign of the unspeakably aggravated, when the greater part of the property emperor Charles V., by awakening the enthusiasm, contri- of a nation is locked up, and a large proportion of its inhabbuted to develope the genius of the Spanish nation; and the itants, and of their time, is withdrawn from useful labour. impulse thus given to intellect continued to operate long after Holland, with no soil but what she recovered from the the cause which had produced it was removed. But the ocean, waxed rich and independent, while Spain, with a third character of the degenerate age in which they lived was im- part of the world in her possession, has become poor. The pressed even on the towering talents of Cervantes, Lope de city of Toledo is reduced to an eighth part of its former popuVega and Calderon, and can be easily traced in the false lation; the monks remain, but the citizens have fled. Every ideas, childest prejudices, and gross ignorance of facts which street in Salamanca swarms with sturdy beggars and vagadisfigure their writings. With these master spirits of litera-bonds able to work; and this is the case wherever the clergy, ture the genius of Spain sunk; and when it began to recover convents and hospicios are numerous. With a soil which, from the lethargy by which it was long oppressed, it assumed by its extent and fertility, is capable of supporting an equal the most unnatural form. Imagination being the only field number of inhabitants, the population of Spain is not half left open to them, Spanish writers, as if they wished to com- that of France.

pensate for the restraints under which they were laid, set The effects produced on the national character and morals aside the rules of good taste, and abandoned themselves to are still more deplorable. Possessing naturally some of the all the extravagancies of fancy, which they embodied in the finest qualities by which a people can be distinguishedmost inflated and pedantic language. Although the natural generous, feeling, devoted, constant-the Spaniards became talents of the inhabitants are excellent, there is at present no cruel, proud, reserved and jealous. The revclting spectacles taste for literature in Spain. The lectures on experimental of the auto-de-fe, continued for so long a period, could not philosophy which Solano began to deliver gratis in the capital fail to have the most hardening influence on their feelings. towards the close of the last century, though distinguished In Spain, as in Italy, religion is associated with crime, and by their simplicity and elegance, were discontinued for want protected by its sanctions. Thieves and prostitutes have their of an audience. Reading is unknown except among a very images of the Virgin, their prayers, their holy water, and their limited class. Every attempt to establish a literary magazine confessors. Murderers find a sanctuary in the churches and has failed, through the listlessness of the public mind and convents. Crimes of the blackest character are left unpunthe control of the censorship. And the spies of the police ished in consequence of the immunities granted to the clergy. and the Inquisition have long ago banished every thing like Adultery is common, and those who live habitually in this rational conversation from those places in which the people vice, find no difficulty in obtaining absolution. The cortejos, assemble to spend their leisure hours. or male paramours, like the cicisbei in Italy, appear regularly In Italy the same causes produced the same effects. Genius, in the family circle. In great cities the canons of cathedrals taste and learning were crushed under the iron hand of in- act in this character, and the monks in villages. The parish quisitorial despotism. The imprisonment of Galileo in the priests live almost universally in concubinage, and all that seventeenth, and the burning of the works of Giannone in the the more correct bishops require of them is, that they do not eighteenth century, are sufficient indications of the deplorable keep their children in their own houses. Until they begin state of the Italians, during a period in which knowledge was to look towards a mitre, few of the clergy think of preserving advancing with such rapidity in countries long regarded by decorum in this matter.

them as barbarous. When their intellectual energies began The dramatical pieces composed by their most celebrated to recover, they were directed to a species of composition in writers, and acted on the stage with the greatest applause, which sentiment and poetry are mere accessories to sensual demonstrate the extent to which the principles of morality harmony, and the national love of pleasure could be gratified have been injured by fanaticism and bigotry. In one of them, without endangering the authority of the rulers. To ennoble after the hero has plotted the death of his wife, and accompleasure and render it in some degree sacred; to screen the plished that of his parents, Jesus Christ is represented as prince from the shame of his own indolence and effeminacy; descending from heaven to effect his salvation by means of a to blind the people to every consideration but that of the miracle. In another, an incestuous brigand and professed aspassing moment; and to give the author an opportunity to sassin preserves, in the midst of his crimes, his devotion for exert his talents without incurring the vengeance of the In- the cross, at the foot of which he was born, and the impress quisition-is the scope and spirit of the Italian opera. Later of which he bears on his breast. He erects a cross over each writers in Italy, whose productions breathe a fiery spirit of of his victims; and being at last slain, God restores him to liberty, were of the French, or rather revolutionary school, life in order that a saint might receive his confession, and and afford no criterion for judging of the national feelings thus secure his admission into heaven. In another piece, Aland taste. fonzo VI. receives the capitulation of the Moors of Toledo, In Spain the increase of superstition, and of the numbers and, in the midst of his court and knights, swears to maintain and opulence of the clergy, has kept pace with the growth of their religious liberties, and to leave for their worship the ignorance. The country is overrun with clergy, secular and largest mosque in the city. During his absence, Constance regular. Towards the close of last century it contained his queen violates the treaty, and places the miraculous imnearly nine thousand convents; and the number of persons age of the Virgin in the mosque. Alfonso is highly indigwho had taken the vow of celibacy approached to two hun-nant at this breach of faith, but the Virgin surrounds Condred thousand. The wealth of the church was equally dis- stance with a crown of glory, and convinces the king, to the proportionate to that of the nation, as the numbers of the great delight of the spectators, that it is an unpardonable sin clergy were to its population. The cathedral of Toledo, for to keep faith with heretics. To give one instance more; in example, besides other valuable ornaments, contained four another piece, the hero, while leading the most abandoned large silver images, standing on globes of the same metal; a life, is represented as adhering to the true faith, and thus grand massive throne of silver, on which was placed an image meriting the protection of St. Patrick, who follows him as of the Virgin, wearing a crown valued at upwards of a thou

sand pounds; and a statue of the infant Jesus, adorned with

* For this bull the nobles pay about six shillings and four pence,

eight hundred precious stones. Six hundred priests, richly the common people about two shillings and four pence, in Aragon. endowed, were attached to it; and the revenues of the arch-In Castile it is somewhat cheaper. No confessor will grant absolubishop were estimated at nearly a hundred thousand pounds. tion to any one who does not possess it. (Townsend, ii. 171-2. The sums which are extorted by the mendicant friars, and Doblado's Letters, p. 214.) Dr. Colbach has given an account of this traffic. In 1709 a privateer belonging to Bristol took a galleon, which are paid for masses and indulgences, cannot be calcu-in which they found five hundred bales of these precious goods, conlated; but the bulls of crusade alone yield a neat yearly taining each sixteen reams, and amounting in all to 384,000 bulls. income of two hundred thousand pounds to his Catholic Captain Dampier says he careened his ship with them.

his good genius to inspire him with repentance. When about represents Christianity, tends naturally to produce deism and to commit a murder, in addition to numbers which he had al-irreligion. In France, where a certain degree of liberty was ready perpetrated, he is converted by an apparition of him- enjoyed, it led at first to the covert dissemination and afterself, and exclaims, "What atonement can be made for a life wards to the bold avowal of infidel opinions, by those who spent in crime?" to which a voice of celestial music replies, had the greatest influence over the public mind. In countries "Purgatory." He is then directed into St. Patrick's Purga- where a rigid system of police, civil and ecclesiastical, has tory, and at the end of a few days comes out pardoned and been kept up, its operation has been different, but not less purified. Still more precious specimens of religious absurd- destructive to national character and the real interests of reliity and fanaticism might have been given from the autos sa-gion. The great body of the unbelievers, anxious only for cramentales, a species of composition which continued to be present enjoyment, and regarding religion in no other light popular till a late period, and has employed the pens of the than as an engine of state, have made no scruple of fostering most celebrated writers in Spain. the popular credulity, that they might share its fruits; while The Italians are bound to religion chiefly by the ties of in- those of more generous and independent spirit, writhing unterest and pleasure. The Spaniards are naturally a grave der the degrading yoke, have given way to irritation of feelpeople; their devotional feelings are strong; and had they ing, and, confounding Christianity with an intolerant superlived under a free government, they would have welcomed a stition, cherish the desperate hope that religion, in all its purer worship, when, after a long period of ignorance, it was forms, will one day be swept from the earth, as the support unveiled to their eyes, and might have proved its most enthu- of tyranny and the bane of human happiness. It is well siastic and constant admirers. But their minds have been known that the Italian clergy have for a long time given the subjugated and their feelings perverted by a long course of most unequivocal proofs that they disbelieve those doctrines, debasing slavery. As to religion, the inhabitants of Spain and feel indifferent to those rights, from which they derive are now divided into two classes, bigots and dissemblers. their maintenance and wealth. We were formerly aware There is no intermediate class. Under such an encroaching that the principles of irreligion were widely diffused among system of faith as that of the church of Rome, which claims the reading classes in Spain; but more ample information, a right of interference with almost every operation of the hu- furnished by recent events, has disclosed the fact, that this man mind, the prohibition of all dissent from the established evil is not confined to the laity, and that infidelity is as com religion is a restraint sufficiently painful. But this is the mon among the educated Spanish clergy as vice is among least evil. Every Spaniard who disbelieves the public creed the vulgar crowd of priests. There is a lightness attached is constrained to profess himself to be what he is not, under to the character of the Italians, which, together with the rethe pain of losing all that he holds dear on earth. What with collection that they have been the chief instrument of enslavmasses, and confessions, and festivals, and processions, and ing the Christian world, disposes us to turn away from the bowing to crosses and images, and purchasing pardons, and manifestations of their irreligion with feelings of contempt. contributing to deliver souls from purgatory, he is every day, But such is the native dignity of the Spanish character, and and every hour of the day, under the necessity of giving his its depth of feeling, that we dwell with a mixed emotion of countenance to what he detests as a Christian, or loathes as pity and awe on the ravages which infidelity is making on so the cause of his country's degradation. It is not enough that noble a structure. Who can read the following description he contrives to avoid going to church or chapel: the idol pre- by a Spaniard without the strongest sympathy for such of sents itself to him abroad and at home, in the tavern and in his countrymen as are still in that "gall of bitterness and the theatre. He cannot turn a corner without being in dan-bond iniquity" from which he was so happily rescued! ger of hearing the sound of the hand-bell which summons "Where there is no liberty, there can be no discrimination. him to kneel in the mud, till a priest, who is carrying the The ravenous appetite, raised by a forced abstinence, makes consecrated host to some dying person, has moved slowly in the mind gorge itself with all sorts of food. I suspect I have his sedan chair from one end of the street to the other. If he thus imbibed some false and many crude notions from my dine with a friend, the passing bell is no sooner heard than French masters. But my circumstances preclude the calm the whole party rise from table and worship. If he go to the and dispassionate examination which the subject deserves. theatre, the military guard at the door, by a well-known Exasperated by the daily necessity of external submission to sound of his drum, announces the approach of a procession, doctrines and persons I detest and despise, my soul overflows upon which "Su Magestad! Dios, Dios!" resounds through with bitterness. Though I acknowledge the advantages of the house; the play is instantly suspended, and the whole moderation, none being used towards me, I practise none, and assembly, actors and spectators, fall on their knees, in which in spite of my better judgment learn to be a fanatic on my attitude they remain until the sound of the bell has died away, own side. Pretending studious retirement, I have fitted up when the amusement is resumed with fresh spirit. He has a small room to which none but confidential friends find admisscarcely returned to his inn, when a friar enters, bearing a sion. There lie my prohibited books in perfect concealment, large lanthorn with painted glass, representing two persons in a well-contrived nook under a staircase. The Breviary enveloped with flames, and addresses him, "The holy souls, alone, in its back binding, clasps, and gilt leaves, is kept brother! Remember the holy souls." upon the table, to check the doubts of any chance intruder."

Religion in its purity is calculated to soothe and support The same person writes at a subsequent period: "The conthe mind under the unavoidable calamities of life; but when fession is painful indeed, yet due to religion itself-I was perverted by superstition, it aggravates every evil to which bordering on atheism. If my case were singular, if my men are exposed, by fostering delusive confidence, and lead-knowledge of the most enlightened classes of Spain did not ing to the neglect of those natural means which tend to avert furnish me with a multitude of sudden transitions from sindanger or alleviate distress. In Spain every city, every pro- cere faith and piety to the most outrageous infidelity, I would fession, and every company of artisans, has its tutelary saint, submit to the humbling conviction that either weakness of on whose miraculous interposition the utmost reliance is judgment or fickleness of character had been the only source placed. The merchant, when he embarks his goods for a for- of my errors. But though I am not at liberty to mention ineign country, instead of insuring them against the dangers of dividual cases, I do attest, from the most certain knowledge, the sea in the ordinary way, seeks for security by paying his that the history of my own mind is, with little variation, that devotions at the shrine of the saint under whose protection of a great portion of the Spanish clergy. The fact is certain; the vessel sails. There is scarcely a disease affecting the I make no individual charge; every one who comes within human body which is not submitted to the healing power of the description may still wear the mask, which no Spaniard some member of the calendar. So late as 1801, when the can throw off without bidding an eternal farewell to his yellow fever prevailed in Seville, the civil authorities, in- country."

stead of adopting precautionary measures for abating the vio- It is evident from this slight sketch that there are many lence of that pestilential malady, applied to the archbishop and powerful obstacles to the regeneration of Spain. Superfor the solemn prayers called Rogativas; and not trusting to

these, they resolved to carry in procession a fragment of the * An English gentleman who had resided long in Italy, and ob true cross, preserved in the cathedral of Seville, which had tained lodgings in a convent, was frequently engaged in friendly disformerly chased away an army of locusts, together with a points of difference between the churches of Rome and England. On cussions with the most intelligent individuals of the house on the large wooden crucifix, which, in 1649, had arrested the pro- the termination of one of these disputes, after the greater part of the gress of the plague. The inhabitants flocked to the church; company had retired, a young monk, who had supported the tenets of and the consequence was, that the heat, fatigue, and anxiety his church with great ability, turning to his English guest, asked him, of a whole day spent in this ridiculous ceremony, increased if he really believed what he had been defending. On his answering the disease in a tenfold proportion. seriously in the affirmative, the monk exclaimed, Allor lei crede piu che tutto il convento. Then, Sir, you believe more than all the

Popery, by the false light and repulsive form in which it convent. (Doblado's Letters, p. 476.)

stition is interwoven with her national habits and feelings; joining in the attempt, by the apprehension that it may lead to and civil and spiritual despotism are bound together by an the overthrow of all religion. It is not difficult to trace the indissoluble league, while they find a powerful auxiliary in operation of all these causes in defeating the struggles for lithe depraved morals of the people; for liberty has not a berty which have been made within these few years in Italy greater enemy than licentiousness, and an immoral people and the Peninsula.

can neither preserve their freedom when they have it, nor re- But may we not cherish better hopes, as the result of those gain it after it has been lost. But what augurs worse than events which have recently induced the more enlightened perhaps any thing else for Spain is, that it does not possess portion of the Spanish nation to turn their eyes to Britian a class of persons animated by the spirit of that reformation instead of France, from which they formerly looked for into which the free states of Europe chiefly owe their political struction and relief? Let us hope that those individuals who privileges. Infidelity and scepticism, besides weakening the have taken refuge in this country, and whose conduct has moral energies of the human mind, have a tendency to break shown that they are not unworthy of the reception they up the natural alliance which subsists between civil and reli- have met with, will profit by their residence among us; that gious liberty. Those who are inimical or indifferent to reli- any of them who, from the unpropitious circumstances in gion cannot be expected to prove the firm and uncompromis- which they were placed, may have formed an unfavourable ing friends of that liberty which has religion for its object. opinion of Christianity, will find their prejudices dissipated They love it not for itself, and cannot be prepared to make all in the free air which they now breathe; that what is excelsacrifices for its sake. Thus, when tyranny takes the field, lent in our religion, as well as our policy, will recommend brandishing its two swords, the right arm of liberty is found itself to their esteem; and that, when providence shall open to be palsied. The irreligious or sceptical principles of those an honourable way for their returning to their native country, who have been called liberals must always excite a strong they will assist in securing to it a constitution, founded on and well-grounded prejudice against their schemes. If they the basis of rational liberty, in connexion with a religion demand a reform in the state, the defenders of abuse have purified from those errors and corruptions which have wrought only to raise against them the cry of impiety. Bigots and so much woe to Spain-which have dried up its resources, hypocrites are furnished with a plausible pretext for putting cramped and debased its genius, lowered its native dignity of them down. And good men, who may be convinced of the character, and poisoned the fountains of its domestic and socorruptions which adhere to both church and state, and might cial happiness. be willing to co-operate in removing them, are deterred from

VOL. II.-2 V

FANATICISM.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM.

Isaac Taylor

— αἱ μετὰ πάθους διαστροφαί
τῆς ψυχῆς χαγεπώτεραι.

PREFACE.

Strict propriety seldom allows an author to obtrude upon the public the circumstances that may have attended and controlled his literary labours. Yet the rule may give way to special reasons; and in the present instance the reader is requested courteously to admit an exception.

SECTION I.

MOTIVES OF THE WORK.

The maladies of the mind are not to be healed any more than those of the body, unless by a friendly hand. But through a singular infelicity it too often happens that these evils, deep as they are, and difficult of cure, fall under a treatment that is hostile and malign, or, what is worse, frivolous. Especially does this disadvantage attach to that peculiar class of mental disorders which, as they are more profound in their origin than any other, and more liable to extreme aggravation, demand in whoever would relieve them, not only the requisite skill, but the very purest intentions.

More than twelve years ago the Author projected a work which should at one view exhibit the several principal forms of spurious or corrupted religion. But discouraged by the magnitude and difficulty of such a task, he after a while, yet not without much reluctance, abandoned the undertaking. Vitiated religious sentiments have too much connexion Nevertheless the subject continually pressed upon his mind. with the principles of our physical constitution to be in every At length he selected a single portion of the general theme, case effectively amended by methods that are merely theoand adventured-NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM. logical; and yet, drawing their strength as they do from great Emboldened to proceed, the Author almost immediately truths with which the physiologist has ordinarily little or no entered upon the nearly connected and sequent subject which personal acquaintance, and which perhaps he holds in contempt, he is likely to err, as well in theory as in practice, fills the present volume. Yet fearing lest, by an unskilful when he takes them in hand. How profound soever or exact or unadvised treatment of certain arduous matters which may be his knowledge of human nature, whether as matter it involves, he might create embarrassment where most he of science or as matter of observation, the subject, in these desired to do good, he laid aside his materials.

But in the interval, by extending his researches concerning the rise and progress of the fatal errors that have obscured our holy religion, the Author greatly enhanced his wish to achieve his first purpose. He therefore resumed FANATICISM; which is now offered to the candour of the Reader. He next proposes, in advancing towards the completion of his original design, to take in hand SUPERSTITION, and its attendant, CREDULITY.

instances, lies beyond his range!-himself neither religious nor even superstitious, he has no sympathy with the deep movements of the soul in its relation to the Infinite and Invisible Being; he has no clue therefore to the secret he is in search of. The misapprehensions of the frigid philosopher are vastly increased if it should happen that, in reference to religion, his feelings are petulant and acrimonious. Poor preparation truly for a task of such peculiar difficulty to be at once ignorant in the chief article of the case, and hurried on by the motives that attend a caustic levity of temper! It would indeed be difficult to furnish a satisfactory reason of A natural transition leads from Superstition and Credulity either for the asperity or for the levity with which persons to SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM. The principal perversions of Re-a certain class allow themselves to speak of grave perversions of the religious sentiment; for if such vices of the spirit be ligion having thus been reviewed, it would be proper to deregarded as corruptions of the most momentous of all truths, scribe that CORRUPTION OF MORALS which, in different modes, then surely a due affection for our fellow-men, on the one has resulted from the overthrow of genuine piety. There hand, and a proper reverence towards Heaven on the other, would then only remain to be considered SCEPTICISM, or alike demand from reasonable persons as well tenderness as Philosophic Irreligion; and the series will embrace all that awe, in approaching a subject so fraught with fatal mischiefs. the Author deems indispensable to the undertaking he has so long meditated.

Or even if religion be deemed by these sarcastic reprovers altogether an illusion, or an inveterate prejudice, infesting our luckless nature, not the more, even in that case, can rancour

ILT

or levity become a wise and benevolent mind, seeing that pels us to admit) a world of wondrous inconsistencies; and these same powerful sentiments, whether true or false, do so especially so when religious infatuations come in to trouble deeply affect the welfare of the human family. it. How often has there been seen upon the stage of human Or, to look at the subject on another side, it may fairly be affairs beings-must we call them men? who, with hands asked why the religious passions might not claim from su- sodden in blood-blood of their brethren, have challenged to percilious wits a measure of that lenity (if not indulgence) themselves, and on no slender grounds, the praise of a species which is readily afforded to vices of another sort. If Pride, of virtue and greatness of soul!

abhorrent as it is, and if Ambition, with both hands dyed in The very same spirit of kindness which should rule us in blood, and if the lust of wealth making the weak its prey, the performance of a task such as the one now in hand, must and if sensual desires, devoid of pity, are all to be gently also furnish the necessary motive for the arduous undertakhandled, and all in turn find patrons among Sages-why ing. Is it a matter of curious description only, or of entermight not also Fanaticism? why might not Enthusiasm? why tainment, or even with the more worthy, though secondary not Superstition? It would be hard to prove that the deluded purpose of philosophical inquiry, that we are to pass over the religionist, even when virulent in an extreme degree, or when ground of religious extravagance? Any such intention would most absurd, is practically a more mischievous person than be found to lack impulse enough for the labour. There are for instance, the adulterous despoiler of domestic peace, or however at hand motives of an incomparably higher order, than the rapacious dealer in human souls and bodies. Let it and of far greater force, and these (or some of them at least) be true that the Hypocrite is an odious being?-yes, but is have a peculiar urgency in reference to the present moment. not the Oppressor also detestable? And what has become To these motives too much importance cannot be attributed; of the philosophic impartiality of the Sage (self-styed) who and it will be well that we should here distinctly bring them will spend his jovial hours at the table of the Cruel or the to view.

Debauched, while all he can bestow upon the victims of All devout minds are now intent upon the hope of the overreligious extravagance, is the bitterness of his contempt? throw of old superstitions, and of the universal spread of the There is a manifest inconsistency here of which surely those Gospel. But the spread of the Gospel, as we are warranted should be able to give a good account who, themselves, are to believe, implies and demands its clear separation from all far too wise than to be religious. those false sentiments and exaggerated or mischievous modes We leave this difficulty in the hands of the parties it may of feeling which heretofore, and so often, have embarrassed concern, and proceed to say that emotions altogether strange its course. In a word, Christianity must free itself from all to frigid and sardonic tempers, must have come within the entanglement with malignant or exorbitant passions, if it experience of whoever would truly comprehend the malady would break over its present boundaries. Is the world to be of the fanatic or the enthusiast; and much more so, if he is converted-are the nations to be brought home to God? Yes; attempting to restore the disordered spirit to soundness of but this supposes that the Christian body should awake from health. Mere intellectualists, as well as men of pleasure, every illusion, and rid itself of every disgrace. know just so much of human nature as their own frivolous True indeed it is, and lamentable, that the families of man sentiments may serve to give them a sense of: all that lies have remained age after age the victims of error: yet this has deeper than these slender feelings, or that stretches beyond not happened because there has not been extant in every age, this limited range, is to them a riddle and a mockery. But somewhere, a repository of truth, and an INSTRUMENT, or it may happen that a mind natively sound, and one now means of instruction. If even now superstition and impiety governed by the firmest principles, has in an early stage, or share between them the empire of almost all the world, it is in some short era of its course, so far yielded to the influence not because nothing better comes within the reach of the of irregular or vehement sentiments as to give it ever after a human mind, or because nothing more benign is presented to sympathy, even with the most extreme cases of the same its choice. No-for absolute Truth, Truth from heaven, has order; so that, by the combined aid of personal experience long sojourned on earth, and is to be conversed with. Why and observation, the profound abyss wherein exorbitant re-then do the people still sit in darkness? The question may ligious ideas take their course may successfully be explored; painfully perplex us, yet should never be dismissed. Rather nor merely explored, but its fearful contents brought forth a genuine and intelligent compassion for our fellow-men will and described, and this too in the spirit of humanity, or with lead us to prosecute with intense zeal any inquiry which may the feeling of one who, far from affecting to look down as issue in the purification of the means of salvation confided to from a pinnacle upon the follies of his fellow-men, speaks in our care. If the Gospel does not (as we might have exkindness of their errors, as being himself liable to every in- pected, and must always desire) prevail and run from land to firmity that besets the human heart and understanding. land-the anxious question recurs-what arrests its progress? Never, in fact, have we more urgent need of a settled prin- Besides employing ourselves then in all eligible modes for ciple of philanthropy than when we set foot upon the ground propagating the faith, every one competent to the task, should of religious delusion. Nowhere, so much as there, is it institute a scrutiny, at home and abroad, in quest as well necessary to be resolute in our good-will to man, and fixed in of open hinderances to the progress of the Gospel, as of our respect for him too, even while the strictness of import- the more latent or obscure causes of obstruction. The great ant principles is not at all relaxed. Far more easy is it to work in an age of Missions, should it be any thing else than be contemptuously bland, than kind and firm on occasions of the re-inauguration of Christianity among ourselves? If rethis sort. We have only to abandon our concern for serious ligion-religion we mean, not as found on parchments or in truths, and then may be indulgent to the worst enormities. creeds, but in the bosoms of men, were indeed what once it But this were a cruel charity, and a farce too; and we must was, it would doubtless spread, as once it did, from heart to seek a much surer foundation for that love which is to be the heart, and from city to city, and from shore to shore. The consort of knowledge. special reason therefore or the URGENT REASON, why we

A personal consciousness of the readiness with which even should now dismiss from our own bosoms every taint of suthe most egregious or dangerous perversions of feeling at first perstition, and every residue of unbelief, as well as whatever recommend themselves to the human mind, and soon gain is fanatical, factious, or uncharitable, is this-that the world— sovereign control over it, is needed to place us in the position even the deluded millions of our brethren, may at length rewe ought to occupy whenever such evils are to be made the ceive the blessings of the Gospel. subject of animadversion. And if, with the light of Chris- Although we were looking no further than to the personal tianity full around us, and with the advantages of general welfare of individuals, it would always seem in the highest intelligence on our side, we yet cannot boast of having enjoyed degree desirable that whoever believes the Gospel should an entire exemption from false or culpable religious emotions, cast off infirmities of judgment-preposterous suppositionswhat sentiment but pity should be harboured when we come idle and debilitating fears, and especially should come free to think of those who, born beneath a malignant star, have from the taint of malign sentiments. But after we have so walked by no other light than the lurid glare of portentous thought of the individual, must we not give a renewed attensuperstitions? A check must even be put to those strong tion to the influence he may exert over others? No one "livand involuntary emotions of indignation with which we con- eth to himself."-An efficacy, vital or mortal, emanates from template the hateful course of the spiritual despot and perse- the person of every professor of the Gospel.-Every man cutor. Outlaw of humanity, and offspring, as he seems, of calling himself (in a special sense) a Christian, either saves infernals, he may command also a measure of indulgence as or destroys those around him :-Such is the rule of the disthe child of some false system which, by a slow accumula-pensation under which we have to act. It pleases not the Dition of noxious qualities, has grown to be far more malign vine Power (very rare cases excepted) to operate independthan its authors would have made it. Besides, there may re-ently of that living and rational agency to which even the volve within the abyes of the human heart (as history com-scheme of human redemption was made to conform itself.