degraded, ignorant, and superstitious.1 In Europe the noblest forms of men inhabiting the fairest regions, the Italian, the Portuguese, the Spaniard, the multitude, I mean, of their population, are debased low in the scale of civilisation, yet lower in knowledge and the action of intelligence, involved in all the gloom of oppression and mental darkness, without the energy of a free spirit, and without the correction of elevated principle. Not to dwell on the Roman Catholic portions of the British empire, contemplate the vast regions from Cape Horn almost to the banks of

1 Roman Catholics usually point to Belgium as the country now exhibiting their religious system in most perfect operation. And Belgium may seem an exception as regards the degradation and ignorance of her people. But Belgium has been a few years only independent of Holland, and is to this day under the influence of French habits, opinions, and intelligence; and few good Roman Catholics will claim France as a country in which their church holds complete ascendancy, or exercises its due influence.

the Mississippi, and how wretched is the want of mental cultivation, which degrades and cramps the energies of the nations! Religious thoughts are absorbed in the externals of religion, a costly shrine occupying the place of God in the heart. Men's ideas have been led astray, and their notions of God, his attributes, and dispensations, perverted, until infidelity with its dreary waste occupies the length and breadth of the land. The miserable externals indeed remain, a priesthood, and altars, and offices, the skeletons of former grandeur, and titles, the epitaphs of a past existence. But the life and the spirit are gone. Dry bones are all that remain of the faith, such as it was, which animated early missionaries to the western world intelligence feels the institutes of the Church to be a thraldom which it cannot endure; and their system of fictions has produced its natural fruit. But these are the regions in which Romish institutions hold, and have long held, undisputed sway: and their religion is

debased to the level of that image-worship which is presented to their eyes. Not that to images alone is to be imputed this disastrous consequence, but that every particular institution is derived from a general principle with which it is consistent, and which is depraved, because it suffers a depraved system in subordination to it.

The teaching of the Romish Church is not calculated to rouse, but to cramp and smother the mental energies of the people.

All things were made by God, and are his, and have neither being nor growth except in him and among other existences that he still holds in his hand, are the faculties of man, intelligence and will, which can be improved and enlarged only under his ordering. And the end, for which he makes men capable of knowledge and affection, is, that they may know his truth and love his goodness. This relation of the creature to the Creator is an essential part and object of creation. He who rules the spheres in

their eccentric motions, might have governed this world without imparting intelligence or will to man, if he had seen fit: but since he has imparted those faculties, and retains to himself the supreme government, whatever part they perform must be under him, and the first purport of their existence must be to know, and participate in his will. The moment ignorance obscures, or perverseness leads astray the understanding from a just sense of the divine attributes, the creature acts in opposition to him who made it and sustains its being, and the harmony of creation is disturbed.

In this lies the great principle of that intercourse between the soul of man and God, which constitutes devotion. The Almighty, by his own will, connects the material world with himself: matter assumes the form, and submits to the motion, which he is please to give it. Mind, different as it is in its own essence, must be connected with him, not by his will only, but by a reciprocal direction of

its own regards. The active free-will of intelligent and moral faculties cannot bear the same relation to him as matter, which is merely passive under his direction. The one is in itself always and in every thing dependent; the other it has pleased the Almighty to leave free. I need not, for my present purpose, determine, how far that freedom is subject to other influences. Suffice it to know, that there is action in mind which there is not in matter. I think and have a will. in those two faculties lies

give to him who made me. out intelligence or will can

And

all that I can

Beings withgive nothing.

But this is what I can pay of the vast debt of gratitude, which I owe to the author of my being, and giver of Salvation.

And thus we discover the true nature of devotion-the worship in spirit and truth which God requires. The essence of devotion consists in the communion of the spirit of man with the Spirit of God-in a just acceptation therefore of