ing of John was an energetic corrective of the hypocrisy and fanatical presumption of his countrymen. Bring forth," he cries, "fruits meet for repentance; and think not to say to yourselves, We have Abraham to our father;' for I say to you that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham:"—Yes, although the Jewish race, with all its proud pretensions were swept from the face of the earth, Abraham should not want a spiritual progeny, for the Divine power would (as actually it did) instate the Gentiles in the privileges of the ancient church. The Baptist then, although, as we catch a distant glimpse of him, while eagerly listened to by a promiscuous crowd, he may have the air of a virulent declaimer, is not such in fact; for if we will but draw near, and give attention to his discourse, we find him vigorously assailing the national arrogance, and we hear him humbling his hearers in their own esteem, by insisting on those capital articles of morality which had dropt out of their scheme of punctilious and farcical piety.-Moreover he fails not to renounce for himself the honours which the people would have paid him :--but this surely bespeaks him a genuine prophet of the Lord, and proves that he was no aspiring sectarist.

In the remarkable narrative of the temptation the principal circumstance (bearing on our question) is an assertion, by our Lord, of the claim

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of God to human reverence, in contradiction of the impious homage which the Rebel Spirit falsely challenged to himself, as master of the world. The rebuke, "Get thee behind me, Satan," bore against all forms of polytheistic superstition, the essence of which, under whatever guise, is a servile deference paid to malevolent invisible power. And this comprehensive condemnation of the worst of all errors was followed up, throughout the course of our Lord's ministry, by his exercising a rigorous control over the infernal legions :-The malignant power was no longer to usurp the regards of mankind; for a stronger arm than his had despoiled him of the armour wherein he trusted;" and henceforward the Supreme Benevolence alone was to be looked to by man, as the object of hope and fear. The tendency of the New Testament is altogether to emancipate the human mind from its ancient thraldom to the invisible tyrants; and it does this, not by affirming the non-existence of such beings, but by exposing their guile, and by declaring their enchainment, under the hand of the Omnipotent Son of God.-In thus removing the grounds of superstition, Christianity, wherever it takes effect, dries up the source of fanaticism, the virulence of which is drawn from the belief of a malevolent administration of human affairs. '

The subject of diabolical agency has been once and again alluded to, as connected with fanatical sentiments. Had it been possible to

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Every form of religious rancour is implicitly reproved in the announcement which the Divine Deliverer makes, at an early stage of his public ministry, of the purpose of God toward mankind;-"The Father hath so LOVED THE WORLD as to give his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For the Father sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world might be saved through him."-And again, when he declares that-"The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." Whether it be the self-tormenting rigour of the ascetic, or the deadly zeal of the Inquisitor, or the martial rage of the Moslem conqueror, or the crabbed bigotry of the modern dogmatist; each is utterly condemned, and the specious pretexts of each are torn away, by this first axiom of Christianity-That the Gospel is at once the expression, and the means of the DIVINE BENEVOLENCE TOWARD MANKIND AT LARGE. Any zeal, therefore, which is not benign, is not a godly or Christian zeal; rather, we should deem it an infernal impulse that drives on those who, under pretence of religion, torture themselves, or others, or indulge sentiments of contempt and hatred toward mankind in the mass, or toward particular bodies of men :-if this be our spirit,

bring the question within narrow limits the author would have given it a prominent place in the present volume. He proposes to treat it more distinctly in his projected work on Superstition.

it is not the spirit of Jesus;-for he was "the Saviour of all men." It is Satan-not Christ, who is the author of cruelties, and the patron and upholder of sects.

The broadest and the firmest foundation being thus laid in the Gospel for philanthropy (nothing more broad can be imagined) those condemnatory announcements which bear out the message of mercy are wholly deprived of the pernicious force that otherwise might have belonged to them. Nothing can destroy men, we learn, but their final contempt of the Divine forbearance. All men therefore are to be regarded as salvable; and all are, in a genuine sense, the objects of the same Benevolence which has rescued ourselves from perdition. To give effect to this divine benevolence (so far as human agency may extend) is the part that belongs to Christians; nor can any motive be authentic that will not freely play in concert with the unrestricted zeal of compassion.

Our Lord in his discourse with the Samaritan woman throws open the gate of religious privivilege to all nations;-thus shutting out the Jewish arrogance, and at the same time securing the special authority of truth, against a vague and spurious candour. "Ye (Samaritans) know not what ye worship;-for salvation is of the Jews."--It is they who are the keepers of the recorded will of Heaven; it is from among them that shall spring up the new and universal reli

gion. Nevertheless this new religion, although of Jewish birth, is not to be the property of the worshippers at Jerusalem only; but shall comprehend those of every country who "worship the Father in spirit and truth."-The Gospel advances always on a precise line, nor must it ever be turned from the prescribed track.-Yet is this line" gone forth into all the world," and like the equatorial, must girt the globe.

The motives of Christianity, like the powers of nature, produce their genuine fruits only in combination whoever severs, perverts them. Thus when it was said to the first promulgators of the Gospel, just about to " go forth as sheep among wolves"—" Happy are ye when men speak evil of you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil of you falsely for my sake," this same self-congratulation which it was lawful to admit under injurious treatment, might readily subside into a malign habit within the bosom of the oppressed sectarist, if it were not balanced by that other exhortation, soon subjoined, and so emphatically given-" Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you."-The fanatic divides these counteractive elements of feeling. He blesses himself in the presumption of Divine favour, and if he does not loudly curse his persecutor, mutters an anticipation of the wrath that is to fall upon "the enemies of