natural perfections in abeyance, and proclaims, that "He dwells with the man who is of a humble and contrite spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." Thus does the piety taught in the Scriptures make provision against the vain exaggerations of enthusiasm; and thus does it give free play to the affections of the heart; while whatever might stimulate the imagination is inveloped in the thickest covering of obscurity.' pp. 30-32.

But there is an opposite error, into which those fall, who, while assuming the style and phrases of prayer, have no other object than to attain the immediate pleasures of excitement. The devotee is not in truth a petitioner; for his prayers ter'minate in themselves.'

This appetite for feverish agitations naturally prompts a quest of whatever is exorbitant in expression or sentiment, and as naturally inspires a dread of all those subjects of meditation which tend to abate the pulse of the moral system. If the language of humiliation is at all admitted into the enthusiast's devotions, it must be so pointed with extravagance, and so blown out with exaggerations, that it serves much more to tickle the fancy than to affect the heart: it is a burlesque of penitence, very proper to amuse a mind that is destitute of real contrition. That such artificial humiliations do not spring from the sorrow of repentance, is proved by their bringing with them no lowliness of temper. Genuine humility would shake the whole towering structure of this enthusiastic pietism; and, therefore, in the place of Christian humbleness of mind, there are cherished certain ineffable notions of self-annihilation and self-renunciation, and we know not what other attempts at metaphysical suicide. If you receive the enthusiast's description of himself, he has become, in his own esteem, by continued force of divine contemplation, infinitely less than an atom-a very negative quality—an incalculable fraction of positive entity: meanwhile, the whole of his deportment betrays the sensitiveness of a self-importance ample enough for a god.' pp. 34, 5.

This is strongly put; if any thing, too strongly,—not for the description of many a real case of enthusiasm, but because there is a far greater number of cases in which this species of enthusiasm is blended with true piety. The individual has been led, by injudicious instruction, to make the excitation of his feelings the immediate end of prayer; and yet, he does look for something further, though with obscure notions of the real purpose of devotion. In no reference is the Author's remark more just, that the originators of enthusiasm may be few, when the parties infected by it are many. If those persons upon whom it devolves to lead the public devotions of others, have embraced this defective view of the object of prayer, it will of course lead them to seek, as their main purpose, to generate this excitement in their hearers; and this they may do from the most conscientious motives, and with the utmost simplicity of feeling. But the

consequence will be, that their prayers will be apt to assume a didactic, or sentimental, or oratorical character, extremely foreign from the genuine tone of supplication and thanksgiving. We have often, indeed, had occasion to remark, how little of petition, and still less of the spirit of a petitioner, is to be recognized in the public prayers of many most excellent and truly pious persous. We once heard the prayer of a minister warmly eulogised by a gentleman unaccustomed to the Dissenting mode of worship, as an admirable introductory discourse.' It was not meant in satire. And we have heard such didactic devotions defended, on the ground that they have sometimes proved an efficient mode of instruction or impression. But nothing can, in our judgement, justify so flagrant a departure from the proper style and business of prayer. It is a dangerous notion which is thus countenanced, that public prayers are to be listened to, rather than to be joined in. And the example cannot but have a pernicious influence upon the character even of the private devotions of the hearer. And there is, further, no small danger, that the solitary exercises of the closet should become insipid, possibly in the case of the minister himself, as well as with others, from their not partaking of the external excitement which attends the public worship. We fear that erroneous views of the nature of prayer, and a bad taste resulting from such error, which does not actually amount to enthusiasm, are very prevalent; and we should rejoice to see the subject fully discussed in the enlightened and pious spirit of the present Writer.

Another case of religious enthusiasm is one which requires to be stated with the greatest caution, and treated with the tenderest delicacy. It is that sort of 'meliorated mysticism' which 'consists in a solicitous dissection of the changing emotions of 'the religious life, and in a sickly sensitiveness which serves 'only to divert attention from what is important in practical 'virtue.'

There are anatomists of piety who destroy all the freshness and vigour of faith and hope and charity, by immuring themselves, night and day, in the infected atmosphere of their own bosoms. Let a man of warm heart, who is happily surrounded with the dear objects of the social affections, try the effect of a parallel practice;-let him institute anxious scrutinies of his feelings towards those whom, hitherto, he has believed himself to regard with unfeigned love;-let him use in these inquiries all the fine distinctions of a casuist, and all the profound analyses of a metaphysician, and spend hours daily in pulling asunder every complex emotion of tenderness that has given grace to the domestic life; and, moreover, let him journalize these examinations, and note particularly, and with the scrupulosity of an accomptant, how much of the mass of his kindly sentiments he has ascertained to consist of genuine love, and how much was selfishness in disguise ;

and let him, from time to time, solemnly resolve to be, in future, more disinterested and less hypocritical in his affection towards his family, What, at the end of a year, would be the result of such a process What, but a wretched debility and dejection of the heart, and a strangeness and a sadness of the manners, and a suspension of the native expressions and ready offices of zealous affection? Meanwhile, the hesitations, and the musings, and the upbraidings of an introverted sensibility absorb the thoughts. Is it, then, reasonable to presume, that similar practices in religion can have a tendency to promote the healthful vigour of piety?

By the constitution of the human mind, its emotions are strengthened in no other way than by exercise and utterance; nor does it appear that the religious emotions are exempted from this general law. The Divine Being is revealed to us in the Scriptures as the proper and supreme object of reverence, of love, and of affectionate obedience; and the natural means of exercising and of expressing these feelings are placed before us, both in the offices of devotion, and in the duties of life;-just in the same way that the opportunities of enhancing the domestic affections are afforded in the constitution of social life. Why, then, should the Christian turn aside from the course of nature, and divert his feelings from their outgoings towards the supreme object of devotional sentiments, by instituting curious researches into the quality and quantity and composition of all his religious sensations? This spiritual hypochondriasis enfeebles at once the animal, the intellectual, and the moral life, and is usually found in conjunction with infirmity of judgement, infelicity of temper, and inconsistency of conduct.'

If the heart be a dungeon of foul and vaporous poisons,-if it be " a cage of unclean birds,"-if" satyrs dance there,"-if the "cockatrice" there hatches her eggs of mischief,-let the vault of damp and dark impurity be thrown open to the purifying gales of heaven, and to the bright shining of the sun: so shall the hated occupants leave their haunts, and the noxious exhalations be exhausted, and the deathly chills be dispelled. He, surely, need not want light and warmth, who has the glories of heaven before him: let these glories be contemplated with constant and upward gaze, while the foot presses with energy the path of hope, and the hand is busied in every office of charity. The Christian who thus pursues his way, will rarely, if ever, be annoyed by the spectres that haunt the regions of a saddened enthusiasm.'

pp. 36-40.

This moping sentimentalism is to be deprecated, not merely because it holds up piety to the view of the world under a deplorable disguise, nor merely because it deprives its victims of their comfort, but chiefly, the Writer remarks, because it ordinarily produces inattention to the substantial matters of common morality. This is a fact which it is impossible to deny, though it may seem not easily to be accounted for. But, in an earlier page, there occurs a remark in reference to another form of enthusiasm, which may serve to illustrate cases of minor delinquency. A profound knowledge of the heart, the only source

of true candour, is displayed in the explanation there afforded, of those 'offences' that must needs come, but by which the weak are too often turned out of the right way.

When professors of religion are suddenly found to be wanting in common integrity or in personal virtue, no other supposition is admitted by the world, than that the delinquent was always a hypocrite; and this supposition is, no doubt, sometimes not erroneous. But much more often, his fall has surprised himself not less than others, and is, in fact, the natural issue of a fictitious piety which, though it may hold itself entire under ordinary circumstances, gave way necessarily in the hour of unusual trial. An artificial religion not only fails to impart to the mind the vigour and consistency of true virtue, but withdraws attention from those common principles of honour and integrity which carry worldly men with credit through difficult occasions. The enthusiast is, therefore, of all men the one who is the worst prepared to withstand peculiar seductions. He possesses neither the heavenly armour of virtue, nor the earthly.' p. 12.

The enthusiasm of the Romish worshipper is the product of a sumptuous apparatus, framed with consummate skill, for the express purpose of exciting the emotions which spring from the imagination; and the result affords a striking proof of the tendency of enthusiasm to preclude the genuine religion of the heart. Having briefly touched upon this point, the Writer proceeds to shew, that the substitution of poetic enthusiasm for true piety, may take place by the employment of means of a more intellectual cast;-among others, by a style of pulpit oratory which addresses itself to the imagination of the hearer, inas'much as the excitement so engendered more often excludes, ⚫ than merely impairs, genuine feelings.' Surely,' he remarks, there can hardly be any one so little observant of his own consciousness as not to have learned, that the feelings excited by what is beautiful or sublime, terrible or pathetic, differ essentially from those emotions that are kindled in the heart by the ideas of goodness and of purity, or of malignancy and pollution. And every one must know, that virtue and piety have their range among feelings of the latter, not of the former class; and every one must perceive, that if the former occupy the mind to the exclusion of the latter, the moral sentiments cannot fail to be impoverished or corrupted. It is moreover very evident, that the great facts of Christianity possess the means of exciting, in a powerful degree, the emotions that belong to the imagination, as well as those which affect the heart; it therefore follows, that the former may, in whole or in part, supplant the latter; and thus a fictitious piety be engendered, which, while it produces much of the semblance of true religion, yields none of its substantial fruits. In this manner it may happen--not in rare instances, but in manythat if a season of religious excitement has once taken place, though it had in it little or nothing of the elements of a change from evil to good, it may have been assumed as constituting a valid and inamis

sible initiation in the Christian life; and if subsequently the decencies of religion and of morality have been preserved, a strong supposition of sincerity is entertained to the last, even though all was illusory.

'Yet, these melancholy cases of self-deception are not to be remedied by mere explanations of the delusion; on the contrary, the practical use to be made of definitions and distinctions and descriptions in matters of religious feeling, is to exhibit the necessity, and to enhance the value of more available tests of sincerity. Thus, for example, if it appears that, in times like the present, when religious profession undergoes no severe probation, the danger of substituting enthusiasm for true piety is extreme, there will appear the greater need to have recourse to those means of proof which infallibly discriminate between truth and pretension. This means of proof is the standard of morals and of temper exhibited in the Scriptures. No other method of determining the most momentous of all questions is given to us; and none other is needed. We can neither ascend into the heavens, there to inspect the Book of Life, nor satisfactorily descend into the depths of the heart, to analyse the complex and occult varieties of its emotions. But we may instantly and certainly know, whether we do the things which He has commanded whom we call Lord.' pp. 57-9.

In the third section, enthusiastic perversions of the doctrine ' of Divine Influence' are more specifically examined. The first error adverted to, is that which leads the individual to expect some sensible evidence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and to attempt so to dissect his own consciousness as to bring the presence of the Divine Agent under palpable 'examination.' A second error, equally noxious, is involved in the notion which dissociates Divine influence from concurrent means of suasion. Two causes have operated in maintaining this opinion; the one, an ill-judged but excusable jealousy on 'the part of pious persons for the honour of sovereign grace; the other, the imaginary difficulty felt by persons who, having ' unadvisedly plunged into the depths of metaphysical theology, I cannot adjust their notions of Divine aid and human respon'sibility.' If any such difficulty exists, it should be made to rest upon the operations of nature, where it meets us not less than within the precincts of theology. But, continues the Author,

'while the Scriptures affirm in the clearest terms whatever may enhance our ideas of the necessity and sovereignty of Divine Grace, they no where give intimation of a suspended or a halved responsibility on the part of man; but, on the contrary, use, without scruple, language which implies that the spiritual welfare of those who are taught, depends on the zeal and labours of the teacher, as truly as the temporal welfare of children depends on the industry of a father. The practical consequences of such speculative confusions are seen in the frightful apathy and culpable negligence of some instructors and parents, who, because a metaphysical problem, which ought never to have been