The Project Gutenberg eBook, Natural History of Enthusiasm, by Isaac Taylor

ADVERTISEMENT.

The belief that a bright era of renovation, union, and extension, presently awaits the Christian Church, seems to be very generally entertained. The writer of this volume participates in the cheering hope; and it has impelled him to undertake the difficult task of describing, under its various forms, that FICTITIOUS PIETY which hitherto has never failed to appear in times of unusual religious excitement, and which may be anticipated as the probable attendant of a new development of the powers of Christianity.

But while it has been the writer's principal aim to present to the Christian reader, in as distinct a manner as possible, the characters of that specious illusion which too often supplants genuine piety, he has also endeavored so to fix the sense of the term Enthusiasm as to wrest it from those who misuse it to their own infinite damage.

The author would say a word in explanation of his choice of a term in this instance; and of the extent of meaning he has assigned to it. The best that can be done, when matters of mind are under discussion, is to select, from the stores of familiar language, a word which, in its usual sense, approximates more nearly than any other to the abstraction spoken of. To require from an ethical writer more than this, would be to demand that, before he enters upon his subject, he should both renovate the science of mind, and reform his mother tongue: for when things not yet scientifically defined are to be spoken of, it must needs happen that, in proportion to the accuracy with which they are described, there will be apparent occasion for taking exception against the sense imputed to the term employed.

The author proposed it to himself, as his task, to depict, under its principal forms, FICTITIOUS SENTIMENT in matters of religion, including, of course, a consideration of those opinions which seem to be either the parents or the offspring of such artificial sentiments. Having this object before him, he would have thought it a very inauspicious, as well as cumbrous method, to have constructed a many-syllabled phrase of definition, to be used on every page of his essay. Instead of attempting any such laborious accuracy, he has boldly chosen his single term—Enthusiasm; confiding in the good sense and candor of his readers for allowing him a span or two of latitude when employing it in different instances, which seem to come under the same general class.

CONTENTS.

NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM.

SECTION I.
ENTHUSIASM, SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS.

Some form of beauty, engendered by the imagination, or some semblance of dignity or grace, invests almost every object that excites desire. These illusions, if indeed they ought so to be called, serve the purpose of blending the incongruous materials of human nature, and by mediating between body and spirit, reconcile the animal and intellectual propensities, and give dignity and harmony to the character of man. By these unsubstantial impressions it is that the social affections are enriched and enlivened; by these, not less than by the superiority of the reasoning faculties, mankind is elevated above the brute; and it is these that, as the germinating principles of all improvement and refinement, distinguish civilized from savage life.

The constitutional difference between one man and another is to be traced, in great measure, to the quality and vigor of the imagination. Thus it will be found that eminently active and energetic spirits are peculiarly susceptible to those natural exaggerations by which the mind enhances the value of whatever it pursues. At the same time an efficient energy implies always the power of control over such impressions. Yet it is enough that these creations of fancy should be under the command of reason; for good sense by no means demands a rigid scrutiny into the composition or mechanism of common motives, or asks that whatever is not absolutely substantial in the objects of desire should be spurned. He who is not too wise to be happy, leaves the machinery of human nature to accomplish its revolutions unexplored, and is content to hold the mastery over its movements. Whoever, instead of simply repressing the irregularities of the imagination, and forbidding its predominance, would altogether exclude its influence, must either sink far below the common level of humanity, or rise much above it.

The excesses of the imagination are of two kinds; the first is when, within its proper sphere, it gains so great a power that every other affection and motive belonging to human nature is overborne and excluded. It is thus that intellectual or professional pursuits seems sometimes to annihilate all sympathy with the common interests of life, and to render man a mere phantom, except within the particular circle of his favorite objects.

The second kind of excess (one species of which forms the subject of the present work) is of much more evil tendency, and consists in a trespass of the imagination upon ground where it should have little or no influence, and where it can only prevent or disturb the operation of reason and right feeling. Thus, not seldom, it is seen that, on the walks of common life, the sobrieties of good sense, and the counsels of experience, and the obvious motives of interest, and perhaps even the dictates of rectitude, are set at naught by some fiction of an exorbitant imagination, which, overstepping its proper function, invests even the most ordinary objects, either with preposterous charms or with unreal deformities.

Very few minds seem to be altogether free from such constitutional errors of the intellectual sight, which, to a greater or less extent, intercept our view of things as they are. And from the same cause it is that we so greatly miscalculate the amount of happiness or of suffering that belongs to the lot of those around us; which happens, not so much because their actual circumstances are unknown, as because the habitual illusions are not perceived by us amidst which they live. And if the coloring medium through which every man contemplates his own condition were exposed to the eyes of others, the victims of calamity might sometimes be envied; and still oftener would the favorites of fortune become the objects of pity. Or if every one were in a moment to be disenchanted of whatever is ideal in his permanent sensations, every one would think himself at once much less happy, and much more so, than he had hitherto supposed.

The force and extravagance of the imagination is in some constitutions so great, that it admits of no correction from even the severest lessons of experience, much less from the advices of wisdom: the enthusiast passes through life in a sort of happy somnambulency—smiling and dreaming as he goes, unconscious of whatever is real, and busy with whatever is fantastic: now he treads with naked foot on thorns; now plunges through depths; now verges the precipice, and always preserves the same impassible serenity, and displays the same reckless hardihood.

But if the predominance of the imagination do not approach quite so near to the limits of insanity, and if it admit of correction, then the many checks and reverses which belong to the common course of human life usually fray it away from present scenes, and either send it back in pensive recollections of past pleasures, or forwards in anticipation of a bright futurity. The former is, of the two, the safer kind of constitutional error; for as the objects upon which the imagination fixes its gaze, in this case, remain always unchanged, they impart a sort of tranquillity to the mind, and even favor its converse with wisdom; but the visions of hope being variable, and altogether under the command of the inventive faculty, bring with them perpetual agitations, and continually create new excitements. Besides; as these egregious hopes come in their turn to be dispelled by realities, the pensioner upon futurity lives amid the vexations of one who believes himself always plundered; for each day as it comes robs him of what he had fondly called his own. Thus the real ills of life pierce the heart with a double edge.

The propensity of a disordered imagination to find, or to create, some region of fictitious happiness, leads not a few to betake themselves to the fields of intellectual enjoyment, where they may be exempt from the annoyances that infest the lower world. Hence it is that the walks of natural philosophy or abstract science, and of literature, and especially of poetry and the fine arts, are frequented by many who addict themselves to pursuits of this kind, not so much from a genuine impulse of native genius or taste, as from a yearning desire to discover some paradise of delights, where no croaking voice of disappointment is heard, and where adversity has no range or leave of entrance. These intruders upon the realms of philosophy—these refugees from the vexations of common life, as they are in quest merely of solace and diversion, do not often become effective laborers in the departments upon which they enter: their motive possesses not the vigor necessary for continued and productive toil. Or if a degree of ambition happens to be conjoined with the feeble ardor of the mind, it renders them empirics in science, or schemers in mechanics; or they essay their ineptitude upon some gaudy extravagance of verse or picture; or perhaps spend their days in loading folios, shelves, and glass cases with curious lumber of whatever kind most completely unites the qualities of rarity and worthlessness.

Nature has furnished each of the active faculties with a sensibility to pleasure in its own exercise: this sensibility is the spring of spontaneous exertion; and if the intellectual constitution be robust, it serves to stimulate labor, and yet itself observes a modest sobriety, leaving the forces of the mind to do their part without embarrassment. The pleasurable emotion is always subordinate and subservient, never predominant or importunate. But in minds of a less healthy temperament, the emotion of pleasure, and the consequent excitement, is disproportionate to the strength of the faculties. The efficient power of the understanding is therefore overborne, and left in the rear; there is more of commotion than of action; more of movement than of progress; more of enterprise than of achievement.

Such, then, are those who, in due regard both to the essential differences of character, and to the proprieties of language, should be termed Enthusiasts. To apply an epithet which carries with it an idea of folly, of weakness, and of extravagance, to a vigorous mind, efficiently as well as ardently engaged in the pursuit of any substantial and important object, is not merely to misuse a word, but to introduce confusion among our notions, and to put contempt upon what is deserving of respect. Where there is no error of imagination, no misjudging of realities, no calculation which reason condemns, there is no enthusiasm, even though the soul may be on fire with the velocity of its movement in pursuit of its chosen object. If once we abandon this distinction, language will want a term for a well-known and very common vice of the mind; and, from a wasteful perversion of phrases, we must be reduced to speak of qualities most noble and most infirm by the very same designation. If the objects which excite the ardor of the mind are substantial, and if the mode of pursuit be truly conducive to their attainment; if, in a word, all be real and genuine, then it is not one degree more, or even many degrees more, of intensity of feeling that can alter the character of the emotion. Enthusiasm is not a term of measurement, but of quality.

When it is said that enthusiasm is the fault of infirm constitutions, a seeming exception must be made in behalf of a few high-tempered spirits, distinguished by their indefatigable energy, and destined to achieve arduous and hazardous enterprises. That such spirits often exhibit the characters of enthusiasm cannot be denied; for the imagination spurns restraint, and rejects all the sober measurements and calculations of reason, whenever its chosen object is in view; and a tinge, often more than a tinge, of extravagance belongs to every word and action. And yet the exception is only apparent; for although these giants of human nature greatly surpass other men in force of mind, courage, and activity, still the heroic extravagance, and the irregular and ungovernable power which enables them to dare and to do so much, is, in fact, nothing more than a partial accumulation of strength, necessary because the utmost energies of human nature are so small, that, if equally distributed through the system, they would be inadequate to arduous labors. The very same task, which the human hero achieves in the fury and fever of a half-mad enthusiasm, would be performed by a seraph in the perfect serenity of reason. Although, therefore, these vigorous minds are strong when placed in comparison with others, their enthusiasm is in itself a weakness;—a weakness of the species, if not of the individual.

Unless a perpetual miracle were to intercept the natural operation of common causes, religion, not less than philosophy or poetry, will draw enthusiasts within its precincts. Nor, if we recollect on the one hand the fitness of the vast objects revealed in the Scriptures to affect the imagination, and on the other, the wide diffusion of religious ideas, can it seem strange if it be found, in fact, that religious enthusiasts outnumber any other class. It is also quite natural that enthusiastic and genuine religious emotions should be intermingled with peculiar intricacy; since the revelations which give them scope combine, in a peculiar manner, elements of grandeur, of power, and of sublimity (fitted to kindle the imagination), with those ideas that furnish excitement to the moral sentiments.

The religion of the heart, it is manifest, may be supplanted by a religion of the imagination, just in the same way that the social affections are often dislodged or corrupted by factitious sensibilities. Every one knows that an artificial excitement of the kind and tender emotions of our nature may take place through the medium of the imagination. Hence the power of poetry and the drama. But every one must also know that these feelings, how vivid soever and seemingly pure and salutary they may be, and however nearly they may resemble the genuine workings of the soul, are so far from producing the same softening effect upon the character, that they tend rather to indurate the heart. Whenever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly as a source of luxurious pleasure, then, instead of expanding the bosom with beneficent energy, instead of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness, instead of shedding the softness and warmth of generous love through the moral system, they become a freezing centre of solitary and unsocial indulgence; and at length displace every emotion that deserves to be called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is, in fact, more impenetrable than that which usually envelops a pampered imagination. The reality of woe is the very circumstance that paralyses sympathy; and the eye that can pour forth its flood of commiseration for the sorrows of the romance or the drama, grudges a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the unhappy. Much more often than not, this kind of luxurious sensitiveness to fiction is conjoined with a callousness that enables the subject of it to pass through the affecting occasions of domestic life in immovable apathy:—the heart has become, like that of leviathan, "firm as a stone, yea, hard as a piece of the nether millstone."

This process of perversion and of induration may as readily have place among the religious emotions as among those of any other class; for the laws of human nature are uniform, whatever may be the immediate cause which puts them in action; and a fictitious piety corrupts or petrifies the heart not less certainly than does a romantic sentimentality. The danger attending enthusiasm in religion is not, then, of a trivial sort; and whoever disaffects the substantial matters of Christianity, and seeks to derive from it merely, or chiefly, the gratifications of excited feeling; whoever combines from its materials a paradise of abstract contemplation, or of poetic imagery, where he may take refuge from the annoyances and the importunate claims of common life; whoever thus delights himself with dreams, and is insensible to realities, lives in peril of awaking from his illusions when truth comes too late. The religious idealist sincerely believes himself, perhaps, to be eminently devout; and those who witness his abstraction, his elevation, his enjoyments, may reverence his piety; meanwhile, this fictitious happiness creeps as a lethargy through the moral system, and is rendering him, continually, less and less susceptible of those emotions in which true religion consists.

Nor is this always the limit of the evil; for though religious enthusiasm may sometimes seem a harmless delusion, compatible with amiable feelings and virtuous conduct, it more often allies itself with the malign passions, and then produces the virulent mischiefs of fanaticism. Opportunity may be wanting, and habit may be wanting, but intrinsic qualification for the perpetration of the worst crimes is not wanting to the man whose bosom heaves with religious enthusiasm, inflamed by malignancy. If checks are removed, if incitements are presented, if the momentum of action and custom is acquired, he will soon learn to contemn every emotion of kindness or of pity, as if it were a treason against heaven, and will make it his ambition to rival the achievements, not of heroes, but of fiends. The amenities that have been diffused through society in modern times forbid the overt acts and excesses of fanatical feeling; but the venom still lurks in the vicinity of enthusiasm, and may be quickened in a moment meantime, while smothered and repressed, it gives edge and spirit to those hundred religious differences which are still the opprobrium of Christianity. Whoever, then, admits into his bosom the artificial fire of an imaginative piety, ought first to assure himself that his heart harbors no particle of the poison of ill-will.

The reproach so eagerly propagated by those who make no religious pretensions, against those who do—that their godliness serves them as a cloak of immorality, is, to a great extent, calumnious: it is also, in some measure, founded upon facts, which, though misunderstood and exaggerated, give color to the charge. When professors of religion are suddenly found to be wanting in common integrity, or in personal virtue, no other supposition is admitted by the world than that the delinquent was always a hypocrite; and this supposition is, no doubt, sometimes not erroneous. But much more often his fall has surprised himself not less than others; and is, in fact, nothing more than the natural issue of a fictitious piety, which, though it might hold itself entire under ordinary circumstances, gave way necessarily in the hour of unusual trial. An artificial religion not only fails to impart to the mind the vigor and consistency of true virtue, but withdraws attention from those common principles of honor and integrity which carry worldly men with credit through difficult occasions. The enthusiast is, therefore, of all men, the one who is the worst prepared to withstand peculiar seductions. He possesses neither the heavenly armor of virtue, nor the earthly.

It were an affront to reason, as well as to theology, to suppose that true and universal virtue can rest on any other foundation than the fear and love of God. The enthusiast, therefore, whose piety is fictitious, has only a choice of immoralities, to be determined by his temperament and circumstances. He may become, perhaps, nothing worse than a recluse—an indolent contemplatist, and intellectual voluptuary, shut up from his fellows in the circle of profitless spiritual delights and conflicts. The times are, indeed, gone by when persons of this class might, in contempt of their species, and in idolatry of themselves, withdraw to dens, and hold society only with bats, and make the supreme wisdom to consist in the possession of a long beard, a filthy blanket, and a taste for raw herbs: but the same tastes, animated by the same principles, fail not still to find place of indulgence, even amid the crowds of a city: and the recluse who lives in the world will probably be more sour in temper than the anchoret of the wilderness. An ardent temperament converts the enthusiast into a zealot, who, while he is laborious in winning proselytes, discharges common duties very remissly, and is found to be a more punctilious observer of his creed than of his word. Or, if his imagination be fertile, he becomes a visionary, who lives on better terms with angels and with seraphs than with his children, servants, and neighbors: or he is one who, while he reverences the "thrones, dominions, and powers" of the invisible world, vents his spleen in railing at all "dignities and powers" of earth.

Superstition—the creature of guilt and fear—is an evil almost as ancient as the human family. But Enthusiasm—the child of hope—hardly appeared on earth until after the time when life and immortality had been brought to light by Christianity. Hitherto, a cloud of the thickest gloom had stretched itself out before the eye of man as he trod the sad path to the grave; and though poetry supplied its fictions, and philosophy its surmises, the one possessed little force, and the other could claim no authentication; neither, therefore, had power to awaken the soul. But the Christian revelation not only shed a sudden splendor upon the awful futurity, but brought its revelations to bear upon the minds of men, with all the pressure and intensity of palpable facts. The long slumbering sentiment of immortal hope—a sentiment natural to the human constitution, and chief among its passions—instead of being deluded, as heretofore, by dreams, was thoroughly aroused by the hand and voice of reality; and human nature exhibited a new development of the higher faculties. When therefore, in the second century of the Christian era, various and vigorous forms of an enthusiasm, such as the world had hitherto never known, are seen to start forth on the stage of history, we behold the indications of the presence of Truth, giving an impulse to the human mind both for the better and the worse, which no fictions of sages or poets had ever imparted.

In proportion as the influence of scriptural religion faded, the elder and the younger vice—Superstition and Enthusiasm, joined their forces to deform every principle and practice of Christianity, and in the course of four or five centuries, under their united operations, a faint semblance only of its primeval beauty survived; another period of five hundred years saw Superstition prevail, almost to the extinction, not only of true religion, but of Enthusiasm also; and mankind fell back into a gloom as thick as that of the ancient polytheism. But at length the breath of life returned to the prostrate church, and the accumulated and consolidated evils of many ages were thrown off in a day. Yet as Superstition more than Enthusiasm had spoiled Christianity, she chiefly was recognized as the enemy of religion; and the latter, rather than the former, was allowed to hold a place in the sanctuary after its cleansing. Since that happy period of refreshment and renovation, both vices have had their seasons of recovered influence; but both have been held in check, and their prevalence prevented. At the present time (1828)—we speak of protestant Christendom—the power of superstition is exceedingly small; for the diffusion of general knowledge, and the prevalence of true religion, and not less the influence of the infidel spirit, forbid the advances of an error which must always lean for support on ignorance and fear. Nor, on the other hand, can it be fairly affirmed that ours is eminently or conspicuously an age of religious enthusiasm. Yet, as there are superstitions which still maintain a feeble existence under favor of the respect naturally paid to antiquity, so are there also among us enthusiastic principles and practices, which, having been generated in a period of greater excitement than our own, are preserved as they were received from the fathers; and seem to be in safe course of transmission to the next generation.

But even if it should appear that—excepting individual instances of constitutional extravagance, which it would be absurd, because useless, to make the subject of serious animadversion—enthusiasm is not now justly chargeable upon any body of Christians, there would still be a very sufficient reason for attempting to fix the true import of the term, so long as it is vaguely and contumeliously applied by many to every degree of fervor in religion which seems to condemn their own indifference. Not, indeed, as if there were ground to hope that even the most exact and unexceptionable analysis, or the clearest definitions, would ever avail so to distinguish genuine from spurious piety as should compel irreligious men to acknowledge that the difference is real; for such persons feel it to be indispensable to the slumber of conscience to confound the one with the other; and although a thousand times refuted, they will again, when pressed by truth and reason, run to the old and crazy sophism which pretends that, because Christianity is sometimes disfigured by enthusiasts and fanatics, therefore there is neither retribution nor immortality for man. It is the infatuation of persons of a certain character, to live always at variance with wisdom, on account of other men's follies; and this is the deplorable error of those who will see nothing in religion but its corruptions. Nevertheless Truth owes always a vindication of herself to her friends, if not to her enemies; and her sincere friends will not wish to screen their own errors, when this vindication requires them to be exposed.

If, as is implied in some common modes of speaking, enthusiasm were only an error in degree, or a mere fault by excess, then the attempt to establish a definite distinction between what is blameworthy and what is commendable in the religious affections—between the maximum and minimum of emotion which sobriety approves, must be both hopeless and fruitless; inasmuch as we should need a scale adapted to every man's constitution; for the very same amount of fervor which may be only natural and proper to one mind, could not be attained by another without delirium or insanity. If this notion were just, every one would be entitled to repel the charge of either apathy or enthusiasm; and while one might maintain, that if he were to admit into his bosom a single degree more of religious fervor than he actually feels, he should become an enthusiast, another might offer an equally reasonable apology for the wildest extravagances. At this rate the real offenders against sober piety could never be convicted of their fault; and in allowing such a principle we should only authenticate the scorn with which indifference loves to look upon sincerity.

That the error of the enthusiast does not consist in an excess merely of the religious emotions, might be argued conclusively on the ground that the Scriptures, our only safe guide on such points, while they are replete with the language of impassioned devotion, and while they contain a multitude of urgent and explicit exhortations, tending to stimulate the fervency of prayer, offer no cautions against any such supposed excesses of piety.

But, as matter of fact, nothing is more common than to meet with religionists whose opinions and language are manifestly deformed by enthusiasm, while their devotional feelings are barely tepid: languor, relaxation, apathy, not less than extravagance, characterize their style of piety; and it were quite a ludicrous mistake to warn such persons of the danger of being "religious overmuch." Yet it must be granted that those extremes, in matters of opinion or practice, which sometimes render even torpor conspicuous by its absurdities, have always originated with minds susceptible of high excitement. Enthusiasm, in a concrete form, is the child of vivacious temperaments; but when once produced, it spreads almost as readily through inert, as through active masses, and shows itself to be altogether separable from the ardor or turbulence whence it sprang.

To depict the character of those who are enthusiasts by physical temperament is then a matter of much less importance than to define the errors which such persons propagate; for, in the first place, the originators of enthusiasm are few, and the parties infected by it many; and, in the second, the evil with the latter is incidental, and therefore may be remedied; while with the former, as it is constitutional, it is hardly in any degree susceptible of correction.

The examination of a few principal points will make it evident that a very intelligible distinction may, without difficulty, be established between what is genuine and what is spurious in religious feeling; and when an object so important is before us, we ought not to heed the injudicious, and perhaps sinister, delicacy of some persons who had rather that truth should remain forever sullied by corruptions, and exposed to the contempt of worldlings, than that themselves should be disturbed in their narrow and long-cherished modes of thinking. And yet there may be some lesser misconceptions, perhaps, which it will be more wise to leave untouched than to attempt to correct them at the cost of breaking up habits of thought and modes of speaking connected indissolubly with truths of vital importance. It should also be granted, that, when those explanations or illustrations of momentous doctrines which an exposure of the error of the enthusiast may lead us to propound seem at all to endanger the simplicity of our reliance upon the inartificial declarations of Scripture, they are much better abandoned at once, although in themselves, perhaps, justifiable, than maintained; if in doing so we are seduced from the direct light of revelation into the dim regions of philosophical abstraction.

Christianity has in some short periods of its history been entirely dissociated from philosophical modes of thought and expression; and assuredly it has prospered in such periods. At other times it has scarcely been seen at all, except in the garb of metaphysical discussion, and then it has lost all its vigor and glory. In the present state of the world the primitive insulation of religious truth from the philosophical style is scarcely practicable; nor indeed does it seem so desirable while, happily, we are in no danger of seeing the light of revelation again immured in colleges. But although it is inevitable, and perhaps not to be regretted, that religious subjects, both doctrinal and practical, should, especially in books, admit such generalities, every sober-minded writer will remember that it is not by an intrinsic and permanent necessity, but by a temporary concession to the spirit of the age, that this style is used and allowed. He will moreover bear in mind that the concession leans towards a side of danger, and will therefore always hold himself ready to break off from even the most pleasing or plausible speculation when his Christian instincts, if the phrase may be permitted, give him warning that he is going remote from the vital atmosphere of scriptural truth. Whatever is practically important in religion or morals, may at all times be advanced and argued in the simplest terms of colloquial expression. From the pulpit, perhaps, no other style should at any time be heard; for the pulpit belongs to the poor and to the uninstructed. But the press is not bound by the same conditions, for it is an instrument of knowledge foreign to the authenticated means of Christian instruction. A writer and a layman is no recognized functionary in the Church; he may, therefore, choose his style without violating any rules or proprieties of office.

SECTION II.
ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION.

The most formal and lifeless devotions, not less than the most fervent, are mere enthusiasm, unless it can be ascertained, on satisfactory grounds, that such exercises are indeed efficient means for promoting our welfare. Prayer is impiety, and praise a folly, if the one be not a real instrument of obtaining important benefits, and the other an authorized and acceptable offering to the Giver of all good. But when once these points are determined, and they are necessarily involved in the truth of Christianity, then, whatever improprieties may be chargeable upon the devout, an error of incomparably greater magnitude rests with the undevout. To err in modes of prayer, may be reprehensible; but not to pray, is mad. And when those whose temper is abhorrent to religious services animadvert sarcastically upon the follies, real or supposed, of religionists there is a sad inconsistency in such criticisms, like that which is seen when the insane make ghastly mirth of the manners or personal defects of their friends and keepers.

The doctrine of immortality, as revealed in the Scriptures, gives at once reason and force to devotion; for if the interests of the present life only, in which "one event happeneth to the just and to the unjust," were taken into calculation, the utility of prayer could scarcely be proved, and never be made conspicuous, at least not to the profane. As a matter of feeling, it is the expectation of a more direct and sensible intercourse with the Supreme Being in a future life, that imparts depth and energy to the sentiments which fill the mind in its approaches to the throne of the heavenly majesty. But the man of earth who thinks himself rich when he has enjoyed the delights of seventy summers, and who deems the hope of eternity to be of less value than an hour of riotous sensuality, can never desire to penetrate the veil of second causes, or to "find out the Almighty." Glad to snatch the boons of the present life, he covets no knowledge of the Giver.

Not so those into whose hearts the belief of a future life—of such a future life as Christianity depicts—has entered. They feel that the promised bliss cannot possibly spring from an atheistic satiety of animal or even of intellectual pleasures; but that the substance of it must consist in communion with him who is the source and centre of good. This belief and expectation sheds vigor through the soul while engaged in exercises of devotion; for such employments are known to be the preparatives, and the foretastes, and the earnests, of the expected "fulness of joy." The only idea which the human mind, under its present limitations, can form of a pure and perpetual felicity, free from all elements of decay and corruption, is that which it gathers and compounds from devotional sentiments. In cherishing and expressing these sentiments, it grasps, therefore, the substance of immortal delights, and, by an affinity of the heart, holds fast the unutterable hope set forth in the Scriptures. The Scriptures being admitted as the word of God, this intensity of devotional feelings is exempted from blame or suspicion; nor can it ever be shown that the very highest pitch of such feelings is in itself excessive or unreasonable. The mischiefs of enthusiasm arise, not from the force or fervor, but from the perversion of the religious affections.

The very idea of addressing petitions to him who "worketh all things" according to the counsel of his own eternal and unalterable will, and the enjoined practice of clothing sentiments of piety in articulate forms of language, though these sentiments, before they are invested in words, are perfectly known to the Searcher of hearts, imply that, in the terms and the mode of intercourse between God and man, no attempt is made to lift the latter above his sphere of limited notions and imperfect knowledge. The terms of devotional communion rest even on a much lower ground than that which man, by efforts of reason and imagination, would fain attain to. Prayer, in its very conditions, supposes, not only a condescension of the divine nature to meet the human, but a humbling of the human nature to a lower range than it might reach. But the region of abstract conceptions, of lofty reasonings, of magnificent images, has an atmosphere too subtile to support the health of true piety; and in order that the warmth and vigor of life may be maintained in the heart, the common level of the natural affections is chosen as the scene of intercourse between heaven and earth. In accordance with this plan of devotion, not only does the Supreme conceal himself from our senses, but he reveals in his word barely a glimpse of his essential glories. By some naked affirmations we are indeed secured against false and grovelling notions of the divine nature; but these hints are incidental, and so scanty that every excursive mind goes beyond them in its conceptions of the infinite attributes.

Nor is it only the brightness of the eternal throne that is shrouded from the view of those who are invited to draw near to him that "sitteth thereon;" for the immeasurable distance that separates man from his Maker is carefully veiled by the concealment of the intervening orders of rational beings. Although the fact of such superior existences is clearly affirmed, nothing more than the bare fact is imparted: nor can we misunderstand the reason and necessity of so much reserve; for without it, those free and kindly movements of the heart in which genuine devotion consists, would be overborne by impressions of a kind that belong to the imagination. Distance is known and measured only by the perception of intermediate objects. The traveller who, with weary steps, has passed from one extremity to the other of a continent, and whose memory is fraught with the recollection of the various scenes of the journey, is qualified to attach a distinct idea to the higher terms of measurement; but the notion of extended space formed by those who have never passed the boundary of their native province is vague and unreal. Such are the notions which, with all the aids of astronomy and arithmetic, we form of the distances even of the nearest of the heavenly bodies. But if the traveller who has actually looked upon the ten thousand successive landscapes that lie between the farthest west and the remotest east could, with a sustained effort of memory and imagination, hold all those scenes in recollection, and repeat the voluminous idea with distinct reiteration until the millions of millions were numbered that separate sun from sun; and if the notion thus laboriously obtained could be vividly supported and transferred to the pathless spaces of the universe, then that prospect of distant systems which night opens before us, instead of exciting mild and pleasurable emotions of admiration, would rather oppress the imagination under a painful sense of the so measured interval. If the eye, when it fixes its gaze upon the vault of heaven, could see, in fancy, a causeway arched across the void, and bordered in long series with the hills and plains of an earthly journey—repeated ten thousand and ten thousand times, until ages were spent in the pilgrimage, then would he who possessed such a power of vision hide himself in caverns rather than venture to look up to the terrible magnitude of the starry skies, thus set out in parts before him.

And yet the utmost distances of the material universe are finite; but the disparity of nature which separates man from his Maker is infinite; nor can the interval be filled up or brought under any process of measurement. Nevertheless, in the view of our feeble conceptions, an apparent measurement or filling up of the infinite void would take place, and so the idea of immense separation would be painfully enhanced if distinct vision were obtained of the towering hierarchy of intelligences at the basement of which the human system is founded. Were it indeed permitted to man to gaze upward from step to step, and from range to range of the vast edifice of rational existences, and could his eye attain its summit, and then perceive, at an infinite height beyond that highest platform of created beings, the lowest beams of the eternal throne, what liberty of heart would afterwards be left to him in drawing near to the Father of spirits? How, after such a revelation of the upper world, could the affectionate cheerfulness of earthly worship again take place? Or how, while contemplating the measured vastness of the interval between heaven and earth, could the dwellers thereon come familiarly, as before, to the Hearer of prayer, bringing with them the small requests of their petty interests of the present life? If introduction were had to the society of those beings whose wisdom has accumulated during ages which time forgets to number, and who have lived to see, once and again, the mystery of the providence of God complete its cycles, would not the impression of created superiority oppress the spirit, and obstruct its access to the Being whose excellences are absolute and infinite? Or what would be the feelings of the infirm child of earth, if, when about to present his supplications, he found himself standing in the theatre of heaven, and saw, ranged in a circle wider than the skies, the congregation of immortals? These spectacles of greatness, if laid open to perception, would present such an interminable perspective of glory, and so set out the immeasurable distance between ourselves and the Supreme Being with a long gradation of splendors, that we should henceforward feel as if thrust down to an extreme remoteness from the Divine notice; and it would be hard, or impossible, to retain, with any comfortable conviction, the belief in the nearness of him who is revealed as "a very present help in every time of trouble." But that our feeble spirits may not thus be overborne, or our faith and confidence baffled and perplexed, the Most High hides from our sight the ministries of his court, and, dismissing his train, visits with infinite condescension the lowly abodes of those who fear him, and dwells as a Father in the homes of earth.

Every ambitious attempt to break through the humbling conditions on which man may hold communion with God, must then fail of success; since the Supreme has fixed the scene of worship and converse, not in the skies, but on earth. The Scripture models of devotion, far from encouraging vague and inarticulate contemplations, consist of such utterances of desire, or hope, or love, as seem to suppose the existence of correlative feelings, and indeed of every human sympathy in him to whom they are addressed. And although reason and Scripture assure us that he neither needs to be informed of our wants, nor waits to be moved by our supplications, yet will he be approached with the eloquence of importunate desire, and he demands, not only a sincere feeling of indigence and dependence, but an undissembled zeal and diligence in seeking the desired boons by persevering request. He is to be supplicated with arguments, as one who needs to be swayed and moved, to be wrought upon and influenced; nor is any alternative offered to those who would present themselves at the throne of heavenly grace, or any exception made in favor of superior spirits, whose more elevated notions of the divine perfections may render this accommodated style distasteful. As the hearer of prayer stoops to listen, so also must the suppliant stoop from the heights of philosophical or meditative abstraction, and either come in genuine simplicity of petition, as a son to a father, or be utterly excluded from the friendship of his Maker.

This scriptural system of devotion stands opposed, then, to all those false sublimities of an enthusiastic pietism which affect to lift man into a middle region between heaven and earth, ere he may think himself admitted to hold communion with God. While the inflated devotee is soaring into he knows not what vagueness of upper space, he "whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain," has come down, and, with benign condescension, has placed himself in the centre of the little circle of human ideas and affections. The man of imaginative, or of hyper-rational piety, is gone in contemplation where God is not; or where man shall never meet him: for "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy, and who dwelleth in the high and holy place," when he invites us to his friendship, holds the splendor of his natural perfections in abeyance and proclaims that "he dwells with the man who is of a humble and contrite spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." Thus does the piety taught in the Scriptures make provision against the vain exaggerations of enthusiasm; and thus does it give free play to the affections of the heart; while whatever might stimulate the imagination is enveloped in the thickest covering of obscurity.

The outward forms and observances of worship are manifestly intended to discourage and exclude the false refinements of an imaginative piety, and to give to the religious affections a mundane, rather than a transcendental character. The congregated worshippers come into "the house of God," the hall or court of audience, on the intelligible terms of human association; and they come by explicit invitation from him who declares that "wheresoever two or three are gathered together in his name, there he is" to meet them. And being so assembled, as in the actual presence of the "King of saints" they give utterance to the emotions of love, veneration, hope, joy, penitence, in all those modes of outward expression which are at once proper to the constitution of human nature and proper to be addressed to a being of kindred character and sympathies. Worship is planned altogether in adaptation to the limitations of the inferior party, not in proportion to the infinitude of the superior; even the worship of heaven must be framed on the same principle; for how high soever we ascend in the scale of created intelligence, still the finite can never surmount its boundaries, or at all adapt itself to the infinite. But the infinite may always bow to the finite. Those, therefore, who, inflated by enthusiasm, contemn or neglect the modes and style of worship proper to humanity, must find that, though indulgence should be given to their affectation on earth, no room can be allowed it in heaven.

The dispensations of the divine providence towards the pious have all the same tendency to confine the devout affections within the circle of terrestrial ideas, and to make religion an occupant of the homestead of common feelings. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous," and wherefore, but to bring his religious belief and emotions into close contact with the humiliations of the natural life, and to necessitate the use of prayer as a real and efficient means of obtaining needful assistance in distress? If vague speculations or delicious illusions have carried the Christian away from the realities of earth, some urgent want or piercing sorrow presently arouses him from his dreams and obliges him to come back to importunate prayer and to unaffected praise. A strange incongruity may seem to present itself, when the sons of God—the heirs of immortality, the destined princes of heaven—are seen to be implicated in sordid cares, and vexed and oppressed by the perplexities of a moment; but this incongruity strikes us only when the great facts of religion are viewed in the false light of the imagination; for the process of preparation, far from being incompatible with these apparent degradations, requires them; and it is by such means of humiliation that the hope of immortality, confined within the heart, is prevented from floating in the region of material images.

We have said that when an important object is zealously pursued in the use of means proper for its attainment, a mere intensity or fervor of feeling does not constitute enthusiasm. If, therefore, prayer has a lawful object, whether it be temporal or spiritual, and is used in humble confidence of its efficiency, as a means of obtaining the desired boon or some equivalent blessing, there is nothing unreal in the employment; and therefore nothing enthusiastic. But there are devotional exercises, which, though they assume the style and phrases of prayer, appear to have no other object than to attain the immediate pleasures of excitement. The devotee is not in truth a petitioner; for his prayers terminate in themselves; and when he reaches the expected pitch of transient emotion, he desires nothing more. This appetite for feverish agitations naturally prompts a quest of whatever is exorbitant in expression or sentiment, and as naturally inspires a dread of all those subjects of meditation which tend to abate the pulse of the moral system. If the language of humiliation is at all admitted into the enthusiast's devotions, it must be so pointed with extravagance, and so swollen with exaggerations, that it serves much more to tickle the fancy than to affect the heart: it is a burlesque of penitence very proper to amuse a mind that is destitute of real contrition. That such artificial humiliations do not spring from the sorrow of repentance, is proved by their bringing with them no lowliness of temper. Genuine humility would shake the towering structure of this enthusiastic pietism; and, therefore, in the place of Christian humbleness of mind, there are cherished certain ineffable notions of self-annihilation, and self-renunciation, and we know not what other attempts at metaphysical suicide. If you will receive the enthusiast's description of himself, he has become, in his own esteem, by continued force of divine contemplation, infinitely less than an atom—a mere negative quantity—an incalculable fraction of positive entity! meanwhile the whole of his deportment betrays a self-importance that might be ample enough for a god.

Minds of superior order, and when refined by culture, may be full fraught with enthusiasm without exhibiting any very reprehensible extravagances; for taste and intelligence avail to conceal the offensiveness of error, as well as of vice. But it will not be so with the gross and the uneducated. These, if they are taught to neglect the substantial purposes of prayer, and are encouraged to seek chiefly the gratifications of excitement, will hardly refrain from the utterance of discontent, when they fail of success. Whatever physical or accidental cause may oppress the animal spirits, and so frustrate the attempt to reach the desired pitch of emotion, gives occasion to some sort of querulous altercation with the Supreme Being; or to some disguised imputation of caprice on the part of Him who is supposed to have withheld the expected spiritual influence. Thus the divine condescension in holding intercourse with man on the level of friendship, is abused in this wantonness of irreverence; and the very same temper which impels a man of vulgar manners, when disappointed in his suit, to turn upon his superior with the language of rude opprobrium, is, in its degree, indulged towards the Majesty of heaven. "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself," is a rebuke which belongs to those who thus affront the Most High with the familiarities of common companionship. We say not that flagrant abuses of this kind are of frequent occurrence, even among the uneducated; yet neither are they quite unknown. A perceptible tendency towards them always accompanies the enthusiastic notion that the principal part of piety is excitement.

The substitution of the transient and unreal, for the real and enduring objects of prayer, brings with it often that sort of ameliorated mysticism which consists in a solicitous dissection of the changing emotions of the religious life, and in a sickly sensitiveness, serving only to divert attention from what is important in practical virtue. There are anatomists of piety who destroy all the freshness and vigor of faith, and hope, and charity, by immuring themselves night and day in the infected atmosphere of their own bosoms. But now let a man of warm heart, who is happily surrounded with the dear objects of the social affections, try the effect of a parallel practice; let him institute anxious scrutinies of his feelings towards those whom, hitherto, he has believed himself to regard with unfeigned love; let him in these inquiries have recourse to all the fine distinctions of a casuist, and use all the profound analyses of a metaphysician, and spend hours daily in pulling asunder every complex emotion of tenderness that has given grace to the domestic life; and, moreover, let him journalize these examinations, and note particularly, and with the scrupulosity of an accomptant, how much of the mass of his kindly sentiments he has ascertained to consist of genuine love, and how much was selfishness in disguise; and let him from time to time solemnly resolve to be, in future, more disinterested, and less hypocritical in his affections towards his family! What, at the end of a year, would be the result of such a process? What, but a wretched debility and dejection of the heart, and a strangeness and a sadness of the manners, and a suspension of the native expressions and ready offices of zealous affection? Meanwhile the hesitations, and the musings, and the upbraidings of an introverted sensibility absorb the thoughts. Is it then reasonable to presume that similar practices in religion can have a tendency to promote the healthful vigor of piety?

By the constitution of the human mind, its emotions are strengthened in no other way than by exercise and utterance; nor does it appear that the religious emotions are exempted from this general law. The Divine Being is revealed to us in the Scriptures as the proper and supreme object of reverence, of love, and of affectionate obedience; and the natural means of exercising and of expressing these feelings are placed before us, both in the offices of devotion and in the duties of life, just in the same way that the opportunities of enhancing the domestic affections are afforded in the constitution of social life. Why, then, should the Christian turn aside from the course of nature, and divert his feelings from their outgoings towards the supreme object of devotional sentiment, by instituting curious researches into the quality, and quantity, and composition of all his religious sensations? This spiritual hypochondriasis enfeebles at once the animal, the intellectual, and the moral life, and is usually found in conjunction with infirmity of judgment, infelicity of temper, and inconsistency of conduct.

But it is alleged that the heart, even after it has undergone spiritual renovation, is fraught with hidden evils, which mingle their influence with every emotion of the new life, and that an often-renewed analysis is necessary in order to detect and to separate the lurking mischiefs. To know the evils of the heart is indeed indispensable to the humility and the caution of true wisdom; and whoever is utterly untaught in this dismal branch of learning is a fool. But to make it the chief object of attention is not only unnecessary, but fatal to the health of the soul.

The motives of the social, not less than those of the religious life, are open to corrupting mixtures which spoil their purity, and impair their vigor. As, for example, the emotion of benevolence, which impels us to go in quest of misery, and to labor and suffer for its relief, is liable, in most men's minds, to be alloyed by some particles of the desire of applause; indeed, there are nice and learned anatomists of the heart, who assure us that benevolence, when placed in the focus of high optic powers, exhibits nothing but a gay feathery coat of vanity, set upon the flimsiness of selfish sensibility. Be it so—and let men of small souls amuse themselves with these petty discoveries. But assuredly the philanthropist who is followed through life by the blessings of those "that were ready to perish," and whose memory goes down in the fragrance of these blessings to distant ages, is not found to spend his days and nights in pursuing any such subtile micrologies. Have the sons of wretchedness been most holpen by Rochefoucaulds and Bruyeres, or by Howards? If the philanthropist be a wise and Christian man, he will, knowing as he does the evils and infirmities of the heart, endeavor to expel and preclude the corrupting mischiefs that spring from within, by giving yet larger play to the great motives by which exclusively he desires to be impelled; he will, with new intentness, devote himself to the service in which his better nature delights, and bring his soul into still nearer contact with its chosen objects, and oblige himself to hold more constant communion with the miserable; and he will spurn, with renovated courage, the whispers of indolence and fear. Thus he pushes forward on the course of action, where alone, by the unalterable laws of human nature, the vigor of active virtue may be maintained and increased.

If, indeed, the heart be a dungeon of foul and vaporous poisons, if it be "a cage of unclean birds," if "satyrs dance there," if the "cockatrice" there hatch her eggs of mischief, let the vault of dark impurity be thrown open to the purifying gales of heaven, and to the bright shining of the sun; so shall the hated occupants leave their haunts, and the noxious exhalations be exhausted, and the deathly chills be dispelled. He surely need not want light and warmth who has the glories of heaven before him; let these glories be contemplated with constant and upward gaze, while the foot presses with energy the path of hope, and the hand is busied in every office of charity. The Christian who thus pursues his way, will rarely, if ever, be annoyed by the spectres that haunt the regions of a saddened enthusiasm.

The moping sentimentalism which so often takes the place of Christian motives is to be avoided, not merely because it holds up piety to the view of the world under a deplorable disguise; nor merely because it deprives its victims of their comfort; but chiefly because it ordinarily produces inattention to the substantial matters of common morality. The mind occupied from dawn of day till midnight with its own multifarious ailments, and busied in studying its pathologies, utterly forgets, or remissly discharges, the duties of social life: or the temper, oppressed by vague solicitudes, falls into a state which makes it a nuisance in the house. Or, while the rising and falling temperature of the spirit is watched and recorded, the common principles of honor and integrity are so completely lost sight of, that, without explicit ill-intention, grievous delinquencies are fallen into, which fail not to bring a deluge of reproach upon religion. These melancholy perversions of Christian piety might seem not to belong, with strict propriety, to our subject; but, in fact, religious despondency is the child of religious enthusiasm. Exhaustion and dejection succeed to excitement, just as debility follows fever. Yesterday the unballasted vessel was seen hanging out all the gayety of its colors, and spreading wide its indiscretion before a breeze; but the night came, the breeze strengthened, and to-day the hapless bark rolls dismasted, without help or hope, over the billows.

Amid the various topics touched upon by Paul, Peter, John, and James, we scarcely find an allusion to those questions of spiritual nosology which, in later periods, and especially since the days of Augustine,[1] and very much in our own times, have filled a large space in religious writings. The Apostles believed, with unclouded confidence, the revelation committed to them, of judgment to come, of redemption from wrath by Jesus Christ, and of eternal glory:—these great facts filled their hearts, and governed their lives, and, in conjunction with the precepts of morality, were the exclusive themes of their preaching and writing. Evidently they found neither time nor occasion for entering upon nice analyses of motives; or for indulging fine musings and personal melancholies; nor did they ever think of resting the all-important question of their own sincerity, and of their claim to a part in the hope of the gospel, upon the abstruse dialectics which have since been thought indispensable to the definition of a saving faith. Assuredly the Christians of the first age did not suppose that volumes of metaphysical distinctions must be written and read before the genuineness of religious professions could be ascertained. The want, in modern times, of a vivid conviction of the truth of Christianity, is probably the occasional source of many of these idle and disheartening subtleties; and it may be believed that a sudden enhancement of faith—using the word in its unsophisticated meaning—throughout the Christian community would dispel, in a moment, a thousand dismal and profitless refinements, and impart to the feelings of Christians that unvarying solidity which naturally belongs to the perception of facts so immensely important as those revealed in the Scriptures.

In witnessing, first, the entreaties, and supplications, and tears of a convicted, condemned, and repentant malefactor, prostrate at the feet of his sovereign, and then the exuberance of his joy and gratitude in receiving pardon and life, no one would so absurdly misuse language as to call the intensity and fervor of the criminal's feelings enthusiastical: for, however strong, or even ungovernable those emotions may be, they are perfectly congruous with the occasion: they spring from no illusion; but are fully justified by the momentous turn that has taken place in his affairs: in the past hour he contemplated nothing but the horrors of a violent, an ignominious, and a deserved death; but now life, with its delights, is before him. It is true that all men in the same circumstances would not undergo the same intensity of emotion: but all, unless obdurate in wickedness, must experience feelings of the same quality. And thus, so long are the real circumstances under which every human being stands in the court of the Supreme Judge are clearly understood, and duly felt, enthusiasm finds no place; all is real; nothing illusory. But when once these unutterably important facts are forgotten or obscured, then, by necessity every enhancement of religious feeling is a step on the ascent of enthusiasm; and it becomes a matter of very little practical consequence, whether the deluded pietist be the worshipper of some system of abstract rationalism or of tawdry images and rotten relics; though the latter error of the two is perhaps preferable, inasmuch as a warm-hearted fervor is always better than frozen pride.

One commanding subject pervades the Scriptures, and rises to view on every page: this recurring theme, towards which all instructions and histories tend, is the great and anxious question of condemnation or acquittal at the bar of God, when the irreversible sentence shall come to be pronounced. "How shall man be just with God?" is the inquiry ever and again urged upon the conscience of him who reads the Bible with a humble and teachable desire to find therein the way of life. In subserviency to this leading intention, the themes which run through the sacred writings, and which distinguish those writings by an immense dissimilarity from all the remains of polytheistic literature, are those of guilt, shame, contrition, love, joy, gratitude, and affectionate obedience. And moreover, in conformity with this same intention, the Divine Being is revealed—if not exclusively, yet chiefly—as the party in the great controversy which sin has occasioned. The intercourse, therefore, which is opened between heaven and earth is almost confined to the momentous transactions of reconciliation and renewed friendship. When the Hearer of prayer invites interlocution with man, it is not, as perhaps in Eden, for the purposes of free and discursive converse, but for conference on a special business. "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Almighty, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

The same speciality of purpose and limitation of subject is plainly implied in the appointment of a Mediator and Advocate; for although the establishment of this happy medium of approach authorizes and encourages even a boldness of access to the throne of the heavenly grace, it not less evidently imposes a restriction or peculiarity upon the intercourse between God and man. As the Intercessor exercises his office to obtain the bestowment of the benefits secured to mankind by his vicarious sufferings, the suppliant must surely have those benefits especially in view. The work and office of the Mediator, and the desires and petitions of the client, are correlatives. "No man," said the Saviour, "cometh unto the Father but by me." It follows then, naturally, that those who thus come to the Father should keep in constant remembrance the great intention of the mediatorial scheme, which is nothing else than to reconcile transgressors to the offended Majesty of heaven. But this unalterable condition of all devotional services contains a manifest and efficacious provision against enthusiastical excitements; for the emotions of shame and penitence, and of joy in receiving the assurance of pardon, are not of the class with which the imagination has near affinity, and, in a well-ordered mind, they may rise to their highest pitch without either disturbing the powers of reason, or infringing the most perfect inward serenity, or outward decorum. In a word, it may be confidently affirmed that no man becomes an enthusiast in religion, until he has forgotten that he is a transgressor—a transgressor reconciled to God by mediation.

But when, either by the refinements of rationalism—a gross misnomer—or by superstitious corruptions, the central facts of Christianity have become obscured, no middle ground remains between the apathy of formality and the extravagance of enthusiasm. The substance of religion is gone, and its ceremonial only remains—remains to disgust the intelligent, and to delude the simple. This momentous principle is strikingly displayed in the construction of the Romish worship. That false system assumes the great business of pardon and reconciliation with God to be a transaction that belongs only to priestly negotiation; and as forgiveness has its price, and the priest is at once the appraiser of the offence, and the receiver of the mulct, it would be an intrusion upon his function, an interference that must derange his balances, for the transgressor to act on his own behalf, or ever to inquire what passes between the authorized agent of mercy, and the court of heaven. No room, then, is left in this system for the great and central subject of all devotional exercises. The doctrine of pardon having been cut off from worship, worship becomes unsubstantial. The expiatory death and availing intercession of the Son of God are taken within the rail of sacerdotal usurpation; and of necessity, if Jesus Christ is at all to be set forth "crucified before the people," it can only be as an object of dramatic exhibition. This is the secret of the popish magnificence of worship. Music, and painting, and pantomime, and a tinsel declamation, must do their several parts to disguise the subduction of the essentials of devotion. The laity, having nothing to transact with God, must be amused and beguiled, "lest haply the gospel of his grace" should enter the heart, and so the trading intervention of the priest be superseded.