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ART. III.-CHRISTIANITY NO SUPERSTITION.

THERE are at this time in our own country, and perhaps, though not with equal fulness, in every other land of Christendom, two currents, moving apparently in opposite directions, of extreme feeling on religion. One is disposed to the consecration of everything, the other is disposed to the consecration of nothing. One desires the multiplication of religious observances and theological restraints, and the other their total annihilation. One aims at such a control over the opinions and practices of men, as to place them in perfect spiritual subservience; the other at such an entire removal of all anchors of faith, and all feelings of devotion, as to persuade them, if possible, against the law of their own hearts. The effort of the one is to preserve in religion, the effort of the other to guard against superstition. The two states of mind are very conceivable, and a large-hearted man will have no difficulty in comprehending the peculiarity and believing in the sincerity of both. But while this on the one hand does not necessarily betray him into the weak and extravagant charity of supposing, that because both states of mind are realizable and genuine, all who profess and would promote them are equally pure, earnest and disinterested; neither on the other hand does it necessarily lead him to acquiesce in the truth, or wish for the prevalence of either, or look on with indifference as to the result.

We will endeavour to show the processes by which are formed these states of mind: and first that which opposes itself to superstition, or what it calls such. A young and enthusiastic man, we will say, of an inquiring and independent spirit, is brought up under some one of the more prevalent forms of religion in this country. From his childhood perhaps many difficulties present themselves, an explanation of which is afforded him, more or less satisfactory, for the time, but which recur again and again without any permanent solution accompanying them. He acquiesces in this state of things for some years; when his views are suddenly and powerfully affected, by coming in contact with an entirely new current of thought. He is persuaded, perhaps, that the difficulties he has felt do not in reality belong to the Christian doctrine he professes; that he may relieve himself of these, accept the enlightenment and the liberty he required, and be yet saved to the religious world, and to his profession as a Christian. But perhaps the stream of thought with which he comes in contact is wholly averse to

religion, or at least to the recognition of the religion of Christ. The representation made to him is this: Look at this book, wherein your religion is contained, how many things absurd and incredible it relates, how many facts for which there is no voucher; how many representations of God and of his dealings, unworthy of enlightened views of the great creating Power and his relations to man: observe how anthropomorphic are all the descriptions and declarations of this power. See how he is made to talk, and act, and feel, as though he were a man. Look at the frame and the laws of Nature! do you think they need amendment, alteration, or interposition? do you think that in their beauty and regularity they admit of interruption? do they not speak of their Framer more clearly and truthfully than any words spoken or supposed to be spoken by men pretending to be enlightened from heaven? With regard to the prayers put up in Christian assemblies, how can you suppose that God will change his will at the entreaty of frail creatures of his own? and as to the morality of Christ, so highly vaunted, is it anything more than any sensible and upright man could say at this day?

Stimulated by such representations as these, our young man, in full sincerity of heart, applies himself to the task of philosophizing religion, and curing the world of superstition. He unites himself to others of like mind. His idea of God is first divested, in the process through which he now passes, of all anthropomorphism; then of all personality; then of all particular moral qualities; till at last it represents merely a dim and indefinite Power, an abstraction. Some of his associates call it Nature, and some call it the Universe, and some call it nothing. He brought with him a reverence for Christ, as the highest and best of human beings. But, though at first with a little reluctance, he witnesses his descent from this elevation, and gets habituated to hear him called by the milder of his associates, "a good man,” and by the rougher, an impostor. But all this, he says to himself, is only freedom of thought, only speculation, and he bears it. But there are many others, of a different caste from himself, who still unite with him in their dislike of superstition. Mankind are bound and restricted, they say, by so many absurd and noxious regulations. They live according to the laws of nature. At first the whole, though a little irreverent, sounds not so much amiss. But he begins to find out at last, what living according to Nature means; what God there is left in the world, when the God of the pure and spiritual Jesus is cast out: what religion there is still in the universe, when all the elements of

religion are taken out of the heart of man: what qualities in his associates have taken the place of too much reverence for religion and while he finds out that there are other mental evils which are considerably worse than any of those attached to what he had called superstition, he sickens at the thought of the books which have taken place of the New Testament, and the guides that have taken place of Christ. Time passes on, and at length he appears like a withered leaf at winter's commencement: the majority of his companions, dispersed or fallen, rotting beneath the branches of that tree which now affords them no repose or shelter, or gone to augment the intensity and the amount of the superstitions they had once decried.

Beholding such things, and dreading them; not content with that aid which the Creator hath given to the cultivators of a rational religion in the very heart of man, and which is always sufficient guarantee for his return, under the guidance of sincerity and reason, back into the hopes and obligations of religion, a different set of men have attempted on the other hand to counteract the possible effects of too great laxity of religious opinion, by bracing up the many-stringed instrument of the human heart, to a tightness which too often makes the chords to snap. They reason thus: "We must not appeal to the private judgment, for we know not of what vagaries or impieties it may be guilty. The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and we dare not trust religion. to its irresponsible guardianship. Religion must rest, not upon its own claims, for they may be mistaken, or not found out till too late; not upon the words of Christ or the instructions of the Bible, for these may be taken with various degrees of latitude, and interpreted in different ways. It must rest upon authority; the authority of God indeed as a foundation, but also on the authority of man as a superstructure. There must be certain guides who shall decide in virtue of the commission immediately given them by heaven in all cases of difficulty. The age of miracle, they say, is too distant, too far removed from actual test and vision; we must not suppose it past, but show that God interfereth still in the affairs of his church. The holy spirit that shone into the hearts of Jesus and the Apostles, we must not regard as shining there, once for all, to be a light unto the world; we must believe that it is communicated afresh and individually, to all the men, good or bad, worthy or unworthy, who fill the place of religious instructors, in order that they may speak to mankind with authority. There has been a growing tendency, continue the same men, to

question several articles of the faith; this must be checked, or we know not where it may end. We must not take off, we must rather add. It is better to believe a little more than is necessary than less. If men have said that the church has imposed too much upon their faith, it is high time to impose more. The age is becoming sceptical." Thus do they afford a striking instance (as Sir James M'Intosh admirably and truly expresses it, in reference to similar ill-judged efforts to promote religion) of "that infatuation which in its eagerness to rivet the bigotry of the ignorant, adopts means which infallibly tends to spread utter unbelief among the educated."

Now these are the two parties that between them make up the charge of superstition sometimes brought against Christianity. The one affords the text and the other the commentary. The one the material and the other the judgment. So much are the one set afraid of losing religion, that they smother it with a weight of clothing that does not belong to it; and so much are the others afraid of superstition, that in divesting religion of its supposed incumbrances they leave it to die of nakedness and cold. For we may fairly conclude, that they are the excesses of credulity, and the corruptions of Christ's simple faith, that first provoke the opposition of men of independent and reflecting characters, and that had these no place, there would be no inclination to attack that which in itself, while it favours the further mental and social progress, ministers to the virtue, to the hopes, to the dignity, and to the spiritual wants of man. If they had not the quite independent path of the man of science and of learning, perpetually crossed and intercepted by the absurd veto of the theologian; if they had not the free thought of the virtuous philosopher, perpetually manacled by some narrow and misdrawn dogma of the divine; if they had not the nerves of the timid shaken, the fears of the weak excited, the kind feelings of society embittered by the presumptuous denunciations of some man, as fallible as, and frequently ten times more fallible than, themselves, perpetually inflicting sorrow upon their hearts, and rousing the disdain of their resisting intellect ;-if they had not these things so often around them and about them, few men, we believe in our heart, would have flung a stone against the simple faith of Jesus. But as it is, the distaste which is excited, first against the excrescences and corruptions of Christianity, extends too often afterwards to Christianity itself. The hostility at first entertained against the encroachments of religion manifests itself afterwards against religion even in its own just sphere; and men are to be found in numbers, who stigma

tize Christianity, which is in fact the refuge of all rational devotion, as a superstition.

Now if it be so, how can we be sufficiently astonished at the bold address of one of the first missionaries of this faith, "Ye men of Athens, I perceive, that in all things ye are too superstitious?" What are we to think of those many superstitions to which it gave, as it intended to give, their death-blow at its introduction? What of the superstitions from which, if we would consult itself, it saves us even now? Why instead of inveighing against superstition, did it not avail itself of the amount which already existed, and instead of drawing men away from the service of the Gods many and Lords many of the Heathen world, did it not add to their number?

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Before any one induce us then to call Christianity a superstition, let us consider a few particulars. First of all, what is the meaning of the word? Its derivation is from the Latin term, superstes," " which means survivor. It was customary with the ancient Roman parents, to offer up prayers that they might not be permitted to survive their children, but that their children should survive them. There were some so anxious upon this subject, whether with cause or without, as to be continually agitated by their alarms, and continually pouring forth their deprecatory petitions to the Gods. They were called in consequence the "superstitiosi," or people unduly anxious and timorous about survivorship. No doubt the word was but a short time confined to this its earliest meaning. The application of it to all other persons who upon any other subjects were unduly anxious, and who sought by their unceasing prayers to avert all possible evils that might befal them, was easy and natural. Those who were perpetually alarming themselves about what might await them in the book of fate, who were haunted with the fear of unseen evil powers, who could enjoy no blessing of life, for fear it should be taken from them, and were ever fearful lest they should have omitted some rite or observance that might have propitiated the Gods in their favour, were called generally the superstitious. We shall best bring our remarks on this subject to bear, by following out the wellknown passage in the Acts, to which allusion has already been made. When wandering about Athens and waiting for his colleagues, Paul observed the overweening fear of the people or the state, lest they should have omitted adequate homage and respect to any one of the numerous Gods in whose existence they believed. For in addition to shrines or temples to almost every God of whom they knew, they had erected one at last to the unknown God. This was the crowning act of a miserable

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