timents whence the monkish austerities drew their motive. The religion of the modern Jew, what is it but a ponderous vanity, under the pressure of which the human bosom may hardly heave? that bundle of beggarly elements which he bears about upon his shoulders, allows him not the liberty of emotion which men of other creeds enjoy, and which the fanatic of any creed must possess."

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Maimonides saw in Egypt enough of the follies and horrors of monkery to sicken him of austerities. On this subject he speaks like a man of sense, and in a strain of which, alas, we find few instances among the Christian writers of the time. He condemns as positively sinful, all voluntary inflictions, not directly enjoined by the law (see Bernard's Selections from the Yad Hachazakah, p. 170, and the entire chapter). The doctrine of Repentance, as we find it in this writer, might with advantage to the Jew be compared with the Romish doctrine on the same point, from the age of Pope Gregory I. to the present day. His rule of confession (p. 222) is incomparably more sound than that of the doctors of the church. But Maimonides must not be taken as a sample of Rabbinical instruction: - he boldly appealed to Moses and the prophets.-The Rabbis issued nothing which they did not first deform and render absurd. Qui, &c. . . . .. diebusque æstivis accedat ad locum plenum formicarum, inter quas nudus sedeat. Diebus vero hybernis, frangat glaciem, et in aquis sedeat usque ad nares. Qui, &c. . . . . .sedeatque in aquis diebus hybernis, quantum temporis requiritur ad coquendum ovum. Qui, &c. .... jejunet quadraginta dies continuos, atque singulis diebus vapulet bis, aut ter. Qui, &c.....sedeat in nive et gelu per horam unam singulis diebus; sic faciat per totam hyemem quotidie semel, aut bis. Diebus vero æstivis objiciat se muscis, sive vespis et apibus; aliosve pœnas subeat morti similes. That these penances were matters of form only one might infer from the fact that a forty days' fast is enjoined upon whosoever exacts usury (interest) and that the taking of interest even from the Gentiles is reprobated. See the book called Reschit Cochma, as quoted by the annotator in Raimond Martin's Pugio Fidei. It is curious to observe that the practice of penance has never comported with the sentiments and habits of a trading people.

But to return to Mohammed, and to mention specific causes, it must be noted that the Arabian teacher, by means of his prime doctrine of the merit of military service undertaken for the propagation of the true faith, and by the large and attractive rewards promised to pious valour, appropriated, to the enterprises of active life, all those springs of action which, when left to pend upon the conscience, impel men to inflict upon themselves expiatory torments. Beings of the very same native temperament who, in Christian countries, clad themselves in hair-cloth, and mercilessly twanged the scourge over their own shoulders, put on, in the East, the caparison of war, and wielded the cimeter, and this because the Koran offers paradise to those who die in battle.10

A subsidiary means of diverting the fanaticism of personal austerity was also the importance attached by Mohammed to alms-giving-almost the only positive virtue of his system. The

10 Verily God hath purchased of the true believers their souls and their substance, promising them the enjoyment of paradise, on condition that they fight for the cause of God; whether they slay or be slain, the promise for the same is assuredly due by the law, the gospel, and the Koran. And who performeth his contract more faithfully than God? When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among them, and bind them in bonds. . . . . . . And as to those who fight in defence of God's true religion, God will not suffer their works to perish: he will guide them and will dispose their heart aright, and he will lead them into paradise, of which he hath told them. (Sale's Koran, c. 9 and 27.) We shall presently find occasion to match these passages with some of similar import from other quarters.

sures.

aspirant to immortal sensualities could not indeed every day wet his sword in the blood of infidels; but he might at all times purchase, if not always conquer for himself the future pleaOr if the system still seemed to want a vent for those feelings which give rise to ascetic practices, it was found in the rigour and universal obligation of the annual fast, which afforded to every Moslem such a taste of mortification as might effectively cool the ambition of voluntary hunger. The frantic austerities of the Dervish did not spring out of the Mohammedan theology; but either grew upon it; or have been merely farcical and mercenary; or have been practised in continuation of idolatrous usages which the faith of the Prophet did not extirpate."

The Romish Superstition embraced many more elements of meditative emotion, and those of a more profound sort than were included in the Koran. Although, if we are to speak of it as a whole, and especially if we have in view its condition in the eighth and ninth centuries, Popery was a more corrupt system than that of the Arabian

"Sooffeeism, with its varieties, is a far more ancient and a more widely spread system than the doctrine of the prophet. The philosophic pantheist of Persia and Upper India, the frantic fakir, and the dervish, are personages of all times, and of almost all countries. The ascetic tribe is older than history, and presents the same general features wherever we meet with it. In reading Arrian's account of the Bramins, or Sophists, as he calls them, of India, one might believe he was describing so many Romish saints. Οὗ τοι γυμνοὶ διαιτῶνται οἱ σopioral (Indian Hist.). The Koran neither created nor cherished infatuations of this kind.

prophet, so that Mohammed and the Caliphs may almost claim the praise of religious Reformers; yet did it retain those potent principles of hope and fear-of remorse and compunction, of tenderness too, and of keen sensibility, which put the soul into deep commotion, and set it working upon itself. On the contrary, Mohammed, by strangely admitting into his theology the expectation of a sensual paradise, the pleasures of which were not to differ in substance from the delights of an oriental palace, effectively cashiered from his system every pure and spiritual conception of virtue.12 For if the heaven which a man is thinking of as his last home be grossly voluptuous, of what avail will be fine abstract axioms or grave discourses to teach him purity?

No perversion such as this ever gained ground among Christian nations, even in their lowest state of religious degradation. And as some spiritual conceptions of the Divine character, as well as some just notions of the sanctity of the upper world were generally prevalent, the correspondent belief of the guilt and danger of man as a sinner retained its force. Nevertheless as, at the same time, the genuine and evangelic scheme

12 The contemplative or more refined class of Moslems have strenuously endeavoured to put a figurative construction upon those passages of the Koran which describe Paradise, and have maintained that the prophet never intended to be literally understood. The mass of his followers have taken things as they found them.

I

of remission of sins was nullified, or quite forgotten, the tormented conscience was left to contend as it could with the dread of future retribution.

The doctrine of Purgatory sprang up naturally in the bosoms of men from this mortal conflict of fear and conscious guilt, with the obscure hope of impunity; and although the "fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture," may be traced in its elements to very early times, and although it became at length, in its practical bearing, a device well adapted to serve the purposes of a rapacious priesthood, it should be regarded, in its essence, as nothing more than the proper product of elevated and spiritual notions of virtue, cut off from that solace which the Gospel affords. Some opinion equivalent to the doctrine of purgatory, has been seen, even in our own times, to be associated with the two conditions, namely a damaged Gospel, and a severe morality.

It belongs to another subject, namely SUPERSTITION, to trace the origin and growth of the doctrine of Purgatory. This ancient and widelydiffused dogma went hand in hand with that which led to the invocation of saints, and the belief of their efficient intercession in the court of heaven. The latter doctrine seems to have been ripened, or to have reached a definite form