it as

them the latter may be, and often is, used in a good sense, the former never. Fanaticism is always understood as implying a portion of delusion blended with turbulent or rancorous feeling; in short, as partaking of religious frenzy. The Author's definition of a spurious pietism in combination with the malign passions,' an enthusiasm inflamed by hatred,' is sufficiently in accordance with the conventional import of the term, to prevent all mistake as to his meaning. In analysing this malignant modification of enthusiasm, the Author is led to inquire into the origin of the malign emotions, which cannot be considered as inherent in man's original nature, or as any thing else than a disordered 'state of some power indispensable to the constitution of a rational and independent agent. Such a power is found in the irascible passions, which have for their final cause the preservation of life; being to the mind what pain is to the body, an indication of approaching evil. 'Anger is the safeguard of beings not 'housed, like the tortoise, within an impenetrable crust.' The irascible emotions are, in their native state, unconnected with any attendant pleasure; or, at most, the pain consequent upon their excess or continuance always greatly preponderates.

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By extending themselves beyond their immediate occasion, the irascible passions are quickly converted from acts into habits.—Thus anger becomes petulance or hatred :--wrath slides into cruelty; disgust into moroseness; dislike into envy; and at last the whole course of nature is "set on fire;" or worse-undergoes the tortures of a slow and smothered combustion.

The transition of the passions from momentary energies to settled dispositions, does not advance far (much less does it reach its completion) without the aid of what may be termed a reverberative process, not very difficult to be traced. That quick sympathy which vivifies the impressions of anger, by attributing an ill intention to him who assails us, accompanies, and even in a higher degree, the same class of feelings in their transmuted form of permanent sentiments. A malign temper imputes to an adversary, not a momentary hostility, but an evil nature and a settled animosity like its own. The supposition takes its measure and its quality from the sentiment whence it springs; and as the irascible emotion has now become a constant mood of the mind, so is malignant character made over and assigned to whoever is its object. Evil passions, at this stage, are fast attaining their maturity, and fail not soon to gain absolute mastery over the soul.' pp. 42, 3.

'And yet even the most extreme and deplorable instances that could be adduced of the predominance of the malignant passions, would serve to attest, at once the excellence of the original constitution of human nature, and the indestructible property of its moral instincts. Not the most furious or irascible of men can indulge his passion until after he has attributed an ill intention to the object of his wrath. To be angry with that which is seen and confessed to be innoxious or devoid of hostile feeling, is a reach of malignity that lies beyond the

range of human passions, even when most corrupted or most inflained. How else can we account for the absurd use which the angry man makes of the prosopopeia, when he happens to be hurt, torn, or opposed by an inanimate object?-the stone, the steel, the timber, which has given him a fall, or has obstructed his impatience, he curses on the hypothesis that it is conscious and inimical:-nay, he would fain breathe a soul into the senseless mass, that he might the more reasonably revile and crush it.

And so, when hatred has become the settled temper of the mind, there attends it a bad ingenuity, which puts the worst possible construction upon the words, actions, looks, of the abhorred object. Yet why is this but because the laws of the moral system forbid that any thing should be hated but what actually deserves, or is at the moment thought to deserve, abhorrence? The most pernicious and virulent heart has no power of ejecting its venom upon a fair surface ;—it must slur, whatever it means to poison. To hate that which is seen and confessed to be not wicked, is as impossible as to be angry with that which is not assumed to be hostile. And the most depraved souls, whose only element is revenge, feel the stress of this necessity not a whit less than the most benign and virtuous. Whether the universe any where contains spirits so malignant as to be capable of hating without assignment of demerit, or attributing of ill purpose to their adversary, we know not; but certainly man never reaches such frightful enormity.

any

'What is the constant style of the misanthrope? What the burthen of the dull echoes that shake the damps from the roof of his cavern? Is not his theme ever and again-the malignity, the cruelty, the falseness, of the human race? To hate mankind is indeed his rule; but yet he must calumniate before he can detest it. Nature is here stronger than corruption, and a tribute is borne to the unalterable principles of virtue, even by those unnatural lips that breathe universal imprecations! How does the solitary wretch; prisoner as he is of his own malignity, toil from day to day in the work of ingenious detraction! How does he recapitulate and refute, untired, the thousandth time, every alleged extenuation of human frailty or folly ! How does he strive to justify the bad passion that rules him ;-how eagerly does he listen to any new proof of his poisonous dogma-That man is altogether abominable, and ought to be hated! Inwardly, he feels the sheer absurdity of perpetual malice, and is always defending himself against the accusation of doing immense wrong to his species. But this very labour and this painful ingenuity refutes itself; for if human nature were, as he affirms it to be, simply and purely evil, his own bosom would not be thus tortured by the endeavour to prove mankind abominable, as a necessary condition of his malice. Most evident it is, that if man were not formed to love what is good and follow virtue, he would find himself able to hate his fellows without first imputing to them wickedness and crimes!' pp. 45-47.

But here, we think, the Author would have done well to show more distinctly, that the object of hatred, as well as of anger, is not wickedness, considered as opposite to the will of

God or to the eternal laws of rectitude, but wickedness as hostile or injurious to the individual, or liable to become so. This distinction is the more important, because it might otherwise seem that the Scriptural doctrine of the entire corruption of human nature would tend to generate hatred of the human species,-to foster the unsocial and malignant passions; a consequence which has actually been charged upon it. The calumny may be triumphantly refuted by the incontrovertible fact, that those who have entertained the deepest conviction of the universal depravity of human nature, have ever been found among the foremost benefactors of their species. He who had the most perfect knowledge of what was in man, and who has taught us what are the foul contents of the human heart,* has set the most perfect pattern of meekness, gentleness, and patience, and gave his life a ransom for sinners. In the holy mind of Our Lord, that which was hostile to himself awakened no anger, but only what was hateful or repugnant to the Divine will. The reverse is the rule of human feelings: sin is not hated by unregenerate men, because it is not perceived to be injurious; nor does fallen man sufficiently sympathize (if we may so speak) with his Maker, to abhor evil simply viewed as enmity against God. Hatred, divested of selfishness, ceases to be a malign emotion: it becomes even a modification of benevolence. The language of the Psalmist, "Do not I hate them who hate thee ?" + expresses only a holy antipathy consonant with the purest compassion towards its objects. Thus it is that the doctrine of the corruption of our nature, while it tends to prostrate human pride, and thereby to counteract one powerful source of malignant emotions, produces no hatred of mankind, genders no hostile feeling, but the reverse. And this for two reasons: first, because it is a view of human nature with which the imagination has no concern; and secondly, because it is one which does not alarm the selfish passions.

In the third section, the Author proceeds to illustrate that alliance of the malign emotions with imagination, from which < the former draw both their mitigation and an extension of their field'; an alliance which removes their operation from the narrow ground of self-love to the wider sphere of the social feelings. In the next section, they are viewed in combination with spurious religious sentiments, as constituting fanaticism. The spurious, malign religion of the true fanatic is resolved by our Author into three capital articles: 1. The supposition of malignity on the part of the object of religious worship; 2. A consequent detestation of

* Matt. xv. 19.

VOL. XIII. -N.S.

+ Psal. cxxxix. 21.

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the mass of mankind as religiously cursed and abominable; and, 3. A credulous conceit of the favour of Heaven towards a few, in contempt of the rules of virtue.

Is it theory only,' inquires the Author, or is it matter of history, that MALIGN THEOLOGY has invariably been followed at hand by intolerance, execrations, cruelties? Or whichever may have been precursor, the other has quickly come up. Nor is a simple association all, for the style of the theoretic error will be found to have comported with the character of the practical mischief. Thus it is that, as the belief in malevolent divinities, or the imputation of malevolence (under any disguise of abstract terms) to the Supreme Being, contradicts or distorts the genuine notion of sovereign and impartial JUSTICE, to the tribunal of which nothing is amenable but crime; so, the correspondent feeling towards mankind which such a belief engenders, is not that of righteous disapprobation on the score of moral offences, but that of detestation or abhorrence, on the mysterious ground of ecclesiastical impurity. It is not as the transgressors of a holy law, but as the reprobate of Heaven, that men in particular, or that nations are to be shut out from the circle of our charities. The multitude or herd of mankind is spurned as abominable, much more than as guilty. And when once so grievous a perversion of feeling has taken place, then the whole of the force which belongs to our instinctive notions of retribution, or to our acquired belief of future judgment, is thrown into the channel of our sectarian aversions; and this force, like a mountain torrent, in so passing from an open to a narrow bed, gains new impetuosity.-Ingenuous disapproval becomes covert rancour; virtuous indignation slides into implacable revenge; and acrid scorn completely excludes, not only all indulgence towards the frailty of men, but all compassion for their sorrows.

A sense of justice founded on genuine notions of the Divine character and government, does not carry the mind further than to a mournful acquiescence in the infliction of due punishment upon the guilty. But it is quite otherwise with that perverted feeling which, while it draws its animation from hatred, derives its swollen bulk from the imagination. The imagination inflamed by malignity, respects no bounds in its demand of vengeance. The very essence of justice, which is strictly to observe a limit, scandalizes the fanatic, who must heap terror upon terror, and still fails to satisfy his conception of what might be fitting, as the doom of the accursed objects of his contempt. There is in the human mind, when profoundly moved, a strange eagerness to reach the depths of the most appalling ideas;—or, shall we say, to tread the very lowest ground of the world of woe and horror. This innominate appetite finds its proper aliment, when a Manichæan belief is turned wildly loose upon the field of human misery:- - carnage, murder, slavery, torment, famine, pestilence, pining anguish ;-or hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic fires, are all so many articles in the creed of the malign being. Under the influence of this cavernous inspiration, Pity is thought of, not merely as contemptible, but as impious;-Justice is injustice, and leniency the greatest of crimes.

Are we here only giving point to a paragraph?-or has not history often and again verified such a description of the enormities which the human heart, badly informed, may entertain?' pp. 82–84.

As the Author reserves for another place the refutation of any 'sinister inference which might be drawn from these allegations 'against the serious verities of Christianity', we waive for the present entering into an examination of the above description of the creed and elementary principles of Fanaticism: we must, however, observe, that we do not subscribe to the correctness of the representation, that the herd of mankind are (ever) spurned as 'abominable', on the simple ground of ecclesiastical impurity. It will, if we mistake not, always be found, that such malignant detestation has its source either in national antipathy, or in political enmity, or in some other modification of selfishness, inflamed by the supposed hostility of the objects of our hatred towards that which we cherish, or on which we pride ourselves. A detestation of mankind may derive its pretext and license from the supposition of their being the objects of Divine wrath, but it can scarcely be the consequence of such a supposition. We admit that, precisely according to the notions we entertain of the Divine character', will be the moral effect of the fond supposition, that we are the objects of the special favour of Heaven; and that a malign theology must vitiate, in an extreme degree, every sentiment of the deluded being who deems himself so distinguished above his fellows; but the cause of fanatical rancour is not, we apprehend, to be found in any theological notions, which are themselves caused by, and the product of, fanatical sentiments.

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The Fanaticism of the Scourge is the spirit of the Monkish Enthusiasm, rendered virulent. It is the ascetic stage of fanaticism, which, not being thrown out, as it were, works inwardly upon the unhappy subject of the distemper. The section devoted to the delineation of it, forms a valuable sequel to the chapter on the Ancient Monachism in the "Natural History of EnthuOf this introverted fanatical sentiment, the elements are described to be, 1. A proud rebellion of heart against the miseries, physical and mental, to which man is liable, or rather against the constitution of things which renders him so liable; 2. A consciousness of personal guilt, and dread of retribution; and 3. The supposition or theory of supererogatory and vicarious merit. The first of these elements is allied to the ancient Stoicism. A desperate and sullen pride', the Author remarks, has always marked the austerities of Oriental Polytheism; and in India, we see unmasked, that which in Europe has disguised itself under Christian modes of expression. It would seem that the mind prefers to go out to meet pain, by self-infliction, rather than to have a smaller degree of pain forced upon it by a foreign hand; as if to choose pain, were to sheathe its poignancy, by