of religious feeling, and of zeal for promoting the objects pointed out to them by the leaders of their party. We assume not to be judges of the motives, by which the conduct of those who profess to be seeking their Master's honor and the salvation of their brethren, as well as their own, is influenced. We leave the discernment and estimation of motives to the Searcher of hearts, to whom alone all secrets are known. But we have a right to say, and we do say, for we have the warrant of scripture for saying it, that these public displays of zeal, of excited feeling, and interest in the social exercises of religion and in the sort of esprit du corps efforts and doings, sacrifices and beggings for the promotion of what are called religious objects, which are too often the objects of a party, are not the best evidences, and may not be evidences at all, of a truly devout spirit, a truly religious character, or christian temper. They are not, as we have said, incompatible with unfeigned piety and a truly christian character and temper; they are often, I would fain believe, found associated; but they may exist where this piety, this pure character and temper are wanting. And these may exist in their fullest strength, and beauty, and perfection, where the others are not seen; where, however, all the good effects, that come from them, are accomplished by other means, without publicity or display.

Although religion is in many very important respects a social principle, and not to be concealed in its operation and effects; yet in its origin, in its growth and nurture, in its most direct action and intense operation, it has its seat and home, its temple, its altar, its worship, its struggles, conflicts and triumphs, its joys and sorrows, its troubles and its peace, its fears and its confidence, its

life and its spirit, in the heart of the Christian; and its most important work, its most solemn and interesting offices and concerns, belong to the immediate intercourse of the soul with its Maker; apart from the inspection of every eye, but that which seeth in secret; apart from every ear, but that which hears the desire of the humble, and is open to the feeblest cry of the contrite,―to the faintest sigh of a broken spirit.

The religious principle is indeed social, and seeks for participation and communion in its expression of homage and praise to the common Sovereign and Benefactor of men. It is social, too, in the expression of the benevolent affections; and these affections, no doubt, are animated and strengthened by union and sympathy with others, in the various offices of charity and compassion. To meet this disposition to join with others in offices of religious homage and gratitude, Christianity has instituted, or rather recognised, the previous institution of public worship one day in seven. It has ordained two very simple rites, which are also social in their nature. It has enjoined the exercise and expression of the benevolent affections, in acts of charity, in doing good to all men, as every one has opportunity and ability; but has given no directions to Christians to join themselves to distinct associations for specific objects. "I see it," says an eloquent writer,*" everywhere inculcating an enlarged spirit of piety and philanthropy, leaving each of us to manifest this spirit, according to the monitions of his individual conscience." What every one feels it his duty to give, he is left to give to such objects as most approve

* Dr Channing.

themselves to his judgment: and the only specific injunction relating to this subject is, that we do not our alms to be seen of men; and that in our charities and our devotions, we shun, as much as possible, publicity and display.

Christianity, though it regards society as the great theatre upon which the social affections are to find their proper objects, their due exercise and expansion, is, nevertheless, distinguished from all the religions that have existed in the world, as in many other respects, so especially in this, that it forbids and is opposed to all parade and display; to all ostentation in the remotest degree,— in that it gives little or no countenance to that so general and most powerful principle of human conduct, the praise of men, the desire of earthly fame, "that last infirmity of noble minds," as it has been termed. Actions, in the view of our heaven-taught teacher and exemplar, that are good in themselves, i. e. beneficial in their effects and commanded by God, cease to partake of the nature of true virtue, and lose their merit in the sight of heaven, and their reward in respect to the agent, if they are performed to be seen of men, or from a blind, instinctive, gregarious principle of imitation, merely because others have been excited and compelled by some extraneous impulse, to act in a certain way. To give our money to promote the various, and some of them, at least, very questionable objects of the multiplied and multiplying religious societies and charitable associations, as they are called, of the present day, because others do;-to frequent extraordinary religious meetings because others have instituted and given them their attendance, or that we may seem or be reputed to be as charitable and religious as

those who do these things, or from a fear that we may not be so reputed if we do not, but ill becomes the disciples of a religion, which enjoins on them to have and to give a reason for their faith and practice, to judge of themselves what is right—to be persuaded in their own mind of the expediency, the fitness, and obligation of what they do or refrain from doing. There may be more of sectarian zeal and display, than conviction of duty and utility, in the origin and promotion of many of the novel institutions and enterprises of the passing age. It may justly be questioned, if many things, that are now done in public, might not be more safely and successfully achieved in privacy,--if the teaching of children by strangers in Sunday schools be a wise substitute for the good old usage of parental instruction at home; *—if more real improvement in christian knowledge and piety might not be obtained from private reading and devotion at home, than from being present at a religious meeting in the evening.

Our religion, as before intimated, if we would understand and practise it, as taught and exemplified by Jesus, unlike all other religions, is to be regarded as a religion of the heart and mind, an interior principle, a spiritual empire within us. It discards all unnecessary forms, all outward pomp and circumstance. Anything external, which addresses itself to our own senses, or the senses of others, except as an expression of interior sentiment, feeling, disposition, or purpose already generated and existing in the heart and mind, it regards as empty formality, an idle, if not a sinful mockery.

* See a Discourse entitled "Signs of the Moral Age," by A. Bigelow.

When our Lord entered upon his great mission, he found the world filled with false notions of religion and of duty. Every religion, even that of the Jews, whatever it might have once been, had become only a more or less complex system of ceremonials, of formal observances, gay festivities, public sacrifices, or ostentatious penances and austerities. Jesus removes, at once, all this huge mass of beggarly elements, of superstitious rubbish, of useless bodily exercises, of merely external, ceremonial services. He lifts the veil of outward sense and ceremony, and introduces man into the immediate presence of his Maker. He teaches him to realize the momentous fact, and to feel, that nothing stands between him and this great and hallowed presence,—that temples and sacrifices, ceremonies and outward observances, were all to be superseded by bringing the mind to perceive itself always before and intimately near to the great Parent Mind. The hour cometh, said he, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. Although this spiritual worship may be rendered truly, and with equal, perhaps increased satisfaction and improvement in public, when the mind has once acquired the power of abstracting itself, in the midst of a crowd, from the impression and influence of all visible objects; yet it is certainly true of all, I believe, that this power must have been previously acquired in solitude.

Having come to teach man, that God is equally present everywhere; that the vast universe is to be regarded as a temple, that he has reared for the manifestation of his 15*

VOL. II.NO. IV.