exorbitant religious ideas take their course may successfully be explored ;-nor merely explored, but its fearful contents brought forth and described, and this too in the spirit of humanity, or with the feeling of one who, far from affecting to look down as from a pinnacle upon the follies of his fellow-men, speaks in kindness of their errors, as being himself liable to every infirmity that besets the human heart and understanding.

Never in fact, have we more urgent need of a settled principle of philanthropy than when we set foot upon the ground of religious delusion. Nowhere, so much as there, is it necessary to be resolute in our good-will to man, and fixt in our respect for him too, even while the strictness of important principles is not at all relaxed. Far more easy is it to be contemptuously bland, than kind and firm on occasions of this sort. We have only to abandon our concern for serious truths, and then may be indulgent to the worst enormities.-But this were a cruel charity, and a farce too; and we must seek a much surer foundation for that love which is to be the consort of knowledge.

A personal consciousness of the readiness with which even the most egregious or dangerous perversions of feeling at first recommend themselves to the human mind, and soon gain sovereign control over it, is needed to place us in the position we ought to occupy whenever

such evils are to be made the subject of animadversion. And if, with the light of Christianity full around us, and with the advantages of general intelligence on our side, we yet cannot boast of having enjoyed an entire exemption from false or culpable religious emotions, what sentiment but pity should be harboured when we come to think of those who, born beneath a malignant star, have walked by no other light than the lurid glare of portentous superstitions?-A check must even be put to those strong and involuntary emotions of indignation. with which we contemplate the hateful course of the spiritual despot and persecutor.-Outlaw of humanity, and offspring, as he seems, of infernals, he may command also a measure of indulgence as the child of some false system which, by a slow accumulation of noxious qualities, has grown to be far more malign than its authors would have made it. Besides; there may revolve within the abyss of the human heart (as history compels us to admit) a world of wonderous inconsistencies; and especially so when religious infatuations come in to trouble it. How often has there been seen upon the stage of human affairs beings-must we call them men? who, with hands sodden in bloodblood of their brethren, have challenged to themselves, and on no slender grounds, the praise of a species of virtue and greatness of soul!

The very same spirit of kindness which should rule us in the performance of a task such as the one now in hand, must also furnish the necessary motive for the arduous undertaking. Is it as matter of curious description only, or of entertainment, or even with the more worthy, though secondary purpose of philosophical inquiry, that we are to pass over the ground of religious extravagance? Any such intention would be found to lack impulse enough for the labour. There are however at hand motives of an incomparably higher order, and of far greater force, and these (or some of them at least) have a peculiar urgency in reference to the present moment. To these motives too much importance cannot be attributed; and it will be well that we should here distinctly bring them to view.

All devout minds are now intent upon the hope of the overthrow of old superstitions, and of the universal spread of the Gospel. But the spread of the Gospel, as we are warranted to believe, implies and demands its clear separation from all those false sentiments and exaggerated or mischievous modes of feeling which heretofore, and so often, have embarrassed its course. In a word Christianity must free itself from all entanglement with malignant or exorbitant passions, if it would break over its present boundaries. Is the world to be convertedare the nations to be brought home to God?

Yes; but this supposes that the Christian body should awake from every illusion, and rid itself of every disgrace.

True indeed it is, and lamentable, that the families of man have remained age after age the victims of error: yet this has not happened because there has not been extant in every age, somewhere, a repository of truth, and an INSTRUMENT, or means of instruction. If even now superstition and impiety share between them the empire of almost all the world, it is not because nothing better comes within the reach of the human mind, or because nothing more benign is presented to its choice. No-for absolute Truth, Truth from heaven, has long sojourned on earth, and is to be conversed with. Why then do the people still sit in darkness? The question may painfully perplex us, yet should never be dismissed. Rather a genuine and intelligent compassion for our fellow-men will lead us to prosecute with intense zeal any inquiry which may issue in the purification of the means of salvation confided to our care. does not (as we might have must always desire) prevail and to land-the anxious question arrests its progress ?

If the Gospel expected, and run from land recurs - what

Besides employing ourselves then in all eligible modes for propagating the faith, every one competent to the task, should institute

a scrutiny, at home and abroad, in quest as well of open hinderances to the progress of the Gospel, as of the more latent or obscure causes of obstruction. The great work in an age of Missions, should it be anything else. than the re-inauguration of Christianity among ourselves? If religion-religion we mean, not as found on parchments, or in creeds, but in the bosoms of men, were indeed what once it was, it would doubtless spread, as once it did, from heart to heart, and from city to city, and from shore to shore. The special reason therefore or the URGENT REASON, why we should now dismiss from our own bosoms every taint of superstition, and every residue of unbelief, as well as whatever is fanatical, factious, or uncharitable, is this-that the world-even the deluded millions of our brethren, may at length receive the blessings of the Gospel.

Although we were looking no further than to the personal welfare of individuals, it would always seem in the highest degree desirable that whoever believes the Gospel should cast off infirmities of judgment-preposterous suppositionsidle and debilitating fears, and especially should become free from the taint of malign sentiments. But after we have so thought of the individual, must we not give a renewed attention to the influence he may exert over others? No one "liveth to himself."-An efficacy, vital or mortal, emanates from the person of every professor of