the well-being of his fellow men which incites his endeavours; and yet nothing in his style or mien bespeaks philanthropy. A disposition the very reverse of good - will one would assuredly assign to him. Besides;-while thus anxious to hear a faultless creed uttered by all lips, this champion of the faith walks up and down in a much corrupted world, scarcely heeding the many grievous degradations under which humanity is suffering. His eye can glare upon wretchedness and upon vice in their most melancholy forms and forget what it sees. Nay, into the cup of human woe he can himself pour the bitterest ingredients; he can afflict his fellow men with the whip, with the brand;-he can cast them into dungeons, and leave them there to die in the pestilent damps of his charity;-all this he can do, and still persuade himself that it is zeal for God and love to man which prompts his labours.

Thus absurd is the human mind when fairly surrendered to religious delusions. The power of the infatuation in these cases seems to result from a combination of the opposite feelings belonging to full persuasion and secret misgiving. The controvertist owes the heat of his zeal as well to firm conviction as to a mistrustful anxiety concerning the truth of his dogmas:and the faith and the doubt are alternately attached to the authoritative document of his

X

belief, and to his special interpretation of it. It is this very oscillation of the mind which produces the turbulence of his emotions. If the imagination be liable to high excitement from a pressing sense of the reality and the impending nearness of the objects that engage it, this excitement may be furnished either by a vivid faith in the original CANON, or by confidence in the CREED that has been derived from it. Then-as fear and jealousy bring the irascible passions into play, these will not fail to take occasion from-the obscurity of the subject in dispute-from the cogency of an opponent's argument-from a conscious incompetency to deal with matters so difficult, and not least, from those qualms which follow a too highly stimulated exertion of the faculties.

In matters of belief, and especially when the powerful motives of religion take full possession of the mind, we involuntarily lean very much one upon another. This social instinct is perhaps stronger than is ordinarily supposed; and it is very likely to be lost sight of where the prevalence of angry passions appears to deny its existence. And yet it is in those very instances most intensely at work. Man proves himself to be constituted for society, as well by his hatreds as by his affections. Amid the dimness and the intricacy of the present scene, wherein Truth evades pursuit, and Error uses a thousand artifices to get herself courted, the perplexed spirit

fondly looks for a numerous companionship in the path it takes. Our belief, and the comfort of belief, mount with the tens, and hundreds, and thousands, that are seen to be joining us on the road:-we cannot believe alone; and our doubts too are in the power of others. To assail our convictions is not merely to wound our self-love, and to irritate our pride, but it is to withdraw something from the interior warmth and vigour of the soul. Without formally confessing it as a fact, that an antagonist has robbed us of our assurance-for the contrary would be affirmed, our feelings are the same as if we had been despoiled of that precious possession; and these feelings prompt us not merely to resent the injury, but to recover the property lost.

Putting out of view then certain accessory motives which will presently claim to be mentioned, the zealous champion and propagator of a Creed has an interest to promote that deeply engages his passions. Pride and secular advantages out of the question, it is a matter of sincere anxiety with him to secure, to maintain, and to extend the pale of his party. He looks aghast at the danger of being deserted, or of seeing a host on the opposite heights. No endeavours are too great therefore which may arrest defection while it is small and feeble. Under the pressure of this solicitude it is no wonder that the defender of a Creed should avail himself

of the extreme means of persuasion. Or if measures of violence are not at hand, he snatches up the weapons of spiritual hostility. And first, a strenuous endeavour is made so to identify the special interpretation with the Authoritative Canon of faith, as that whoever impugns the former shall stand declared-the enemy of God. Instead of for a moment admitting the reasonable and modest supposition that the Interpretation may perhaps contain more than the Canon will support, and that therefore caution should be used in doling out anathemas, every artifice of an elaborate sophistry is employed to keep such a supposition out of view. Nothing less than the peculiar exigency of the occasion could drive the zealot into so egregious a dogmatism; for he feels that if he were to give ground but an inch, he must forfeit his usurped right to fling the bolts of heaven. If the Interpretation be not indeed divine, it is merely human-a simple opinion; and if so, must be submitted to the common conditions of argument. The headlong champion would not go so far as he does, if he knew how to stop short, or if there were any middle ground. It may well be believed that, in many an instance, the acrimony and the blasphemous arrogance of sectarists have scandalized even themselves in their more sober moments.-But what could be done?-As well surrender the controversy and confess defeat, as relinquish the

This right

right to curse in the name of God. laid down, and how meagre, how cold, how powerless a thing is the argument, reduced to its naked merits! The punishment affixed by the laws of the moral world to the first offence of entertaining malignant exaggerations, is the necessity it involves of running on to still worse excesses. Once madly insult reason and charity, and we are abandoned, perhaps for ever, by both.

The transition is rapid and almost involuntary from the first stage of fanatical intemperance to its last-the ground in these regions is precipitous, and whoever leaps, leaps into an abyss. The facility with which a specific gratification may be procured is a main circumstance in giving impetuosity to sordid desires: for while it is difficulty that enhances the nobler passions, it is facility that enhances the baser. So, especially, does it happen with rancorous and vindictive emotions. Only allow them a ready means of reaching their consummation, and they rush on ungovernably. Now the peculiarity of the position which the religionist occupies offers always to his hand the most tremendous missiles revenge can covet. On the field of common life many obstacles happily stand in the way to prevent the completion of an angry resolve :-the dark purpose of the moment postponed, dies away, and is forgotten. But it is not so in the spiritual world. The revenge which the irritated zealot meditates is