man; and they rejected, as idle tales, the thousand stories of magic, miracles, and prophecies, which the mystics cited to sustain their cause. Beaten in argument, the mystics called in the mob to their aid; they denounced the philosophers as atheists; banished them, or put them to death.

6. Finding it useless, in the then existing state of knowledge and humanity, to attempt to teach their doctrines openly, the greater part of the philosophers were content, for the sake of peace and their own security, to admit, to a certain extent, the personal character of the Deity; and it was they who invented the celebrated argument from final causes to prove that intelligence and benevolence are attributes of God. Hence arose the various schools of semimystics, who have labored so incessantly and to so little purpose, to reconcile faith with reason; and who have struggled by all sorts of expedients and plausibilities, to render the current theology of their day in some measure consistent with the progressive discoveries of science.

7. The thorough mystics, however, rejected from the beginning this union of religion with philosophy.* They perceived, that in the proposed alliance between faith and reason, faith must be always losing and reason always gaining; till at length the

*The thorough philosophers were much of the same mind. Thus Bacon, in the Second Book of the "Advancement of Learning," speaks of "the extreme prejudice which both religion and philosophy have received, and may receive, by being commixed together; as that which undoubtedly will make an heretical religion, and an imaginary and fabulous philosophy." Upon this point, however, as upon most others, Bacon was unable to conform to his own teaching.

idea of a personal God upon which their whole system rests, must gradually disappear. They at once denounced, and down to the present moment have continued to denounce the semi-mystics as no better than the philosophers, as unbelieving, faithless men, and, as such, worthy of universal execration and the severest punishments.

8. The definition of Faith has, indeed, been the great battle ground of the several sects of mystics and semi-mystics. Faith, according to the lowest of the semi-mystical schools, is, belief founded upon reason. It therefore can hardly be considered to indicate any peculiarity of moral character or ever to be wanting, except where the intellect is defective.

A more numerous class of semi-mystics have defined faith to be, belief founded upon testimony of things above reason, but not contrary to it; and the merit of faith has been represented to consist in the compliment paid to the Deity in listening attentively and readily to his messengers. But the compliment in this case seems rather to be gers themselves.

paid to the messen

The thorough mystics have maintained, that faith is a belief, or rather a vision of God as the only agent always and everywhere present, supernaturally infused into the mind by special grace, whereby the heart of man is changed, and he is enabled to act righteously; all morality not springing from this source being mere selfishness and deceit, and no better than filthy rags. This faith has nothing to do with reason. It is not only above it; it tramples reason under foot. Credo quia impossibile. Though

the prevalence of semi-mysticism in the last two centuries hardly allows this doctrine to be taught, in the more celebrated schools, in this rude form, it still retains, in many countries, a strong hold on the popular mind.

Mystic faith, as ordinarily inculcated, consists in putting on the spirit of a little child; continuing to receive the religious opinions in which one has been educated with implicit reverence and submission; repulsing with indignation all question or doubt; and not only admitting the speculative truth of these opinions, but making them the basis of our whole course of action. This is Catholicism, this is Puseyism, and this also at the present day is Lutheranism, Calvinism, Quakerism, and Methodism; for though the founders of new sects have ever extolled their own internal light, that is to say, their own fancies and their own judgments, above all established opinions, that is a liberty which they have not allowed to their disciples; or rather, which their disciples have not allowed to themselves. Such a liberty, indeed, would be utterly inconsistent with that unity of faith on which the existence of every sect depends. 9. At first thought it might seem difficult to conjecture how pure credulity and mere childishness could ever be extolled, especially in civilized and even enlightened communities, into a crowning virtue and a binding duty. Yet the explanation is easy and plain. Social institutions and current morality, though arising in fact from the very nature of man, have hitherto as far as teaching has been concerned, been almost universally based upon mere authority.

Not having arrived at that pitch of science to be able to give the reason why institutions and manners are, or should be, as they are, men have rested them either upon the authority of wise ancestors, or the instructions of inspired prophets, or jointly upon both. They are so, and they ought to be so, because the wisdom of ancestors so arranged, or God so commanded. Now any person, who undertakes to call this wisdom of ancestors, and these divine commands into question, is looked upon-and, if he have no better substitute to propose, not altogether without reason as a reckless and unquiet person, who for the sake of gratifying his own prying disposition or love of superiority, is willing to risk the destruction of that sentiment of respect for established institutions and opinions, which not knowing any other more solid basis on which to rest them men suppose to be the only foundation, not of political institutions only, but of morals also. Hence systems of morals purely forensic have inculcated conformity to current religious observances, and profound respect for current religious opinions, as imperative duties.

The mystics themselves, moulding God after their own image, and supposing him to think and feel as they do, of course believe that any doubt or hesitation as to any opinions which they entertain about him, or any ceremonies which they practise, and much more their total rejection, must be regarded by the Deity as no better than rank rebellion; and so long as God was believed to visit the sins of individuals not upon themselves only, but upon the whole community, a notion not yet wholly ex

tinct, -that man was necessarily regarded as a bad man, who, in the pride of his reason, did not hesitate to expose the whole community to the anger and fury of an outraged God..

10. The great spread of late and the numerous and continual confirmations of the philosophical doctrine, that the phenomena of nature are governed by fixed and undeviating laws; the constantly increasing proofs of the efficacy of reason and knowledge, as instruments of power and means of promoting human happiness; and more than all, the division of Christendom by virtue of an increasing exercise of reason, into numerous sects and sub-sects, which in their controversies with each other have been obliged, even against their own professed principles, to call in reason to their aid, - these causes have greatly shaken that profound reverence for authority which so many moral codes have inculcated as absolutely essential to the character of a good man. Heretics are no longer burnt at the stake; and though it be yet hardly safe for any man to express opinions upon religious subjects in which he is not sure of the support of some considerable sect, yet the degree of merely moral disapprobation with which such a man is regarded is rapidly diminishing; and in some communities is on the point of disappearing altogether.

11. Mystical systems of morals, and even those parts of forensic systems which are founded upon mystical considerations, give special occasion for Hypocrisy, which is reckoned upon all hands among the most detestable of the vices.