The most formal and lifeless devotions, not less than the most fervent, are mere enthusiasm, unless it can be ascertained, on satisfactory grounds, that such exercises are indeed efficient means for promoting our welfare. Prayer is impiety, and praise a folly, if the one be not a real instrument of obtaining important benefits, and the other an authorized and acceptable offering to the Giver of all good. But when once these points are determined, and they are necessarily involved in the truth of Christianity, then, whatever improprieties may be chargeable upon the devout, an error of incomparably greater magnitude rests with the undevout. To err in modes of prayer, may be reprehensible; but not to pray, is mad. And when those whose temper is abhorrent to religious services animadvert sarcastically upon the follies, real or supposed, of religionists there is a sad inconsistency in such criticisms, like that which is seen when the insane make ghastly mirth of the manners or personal defects of their friends and keepers.

The doctrine of immortality, as revealed in the Scriptures, gives at once reason and force to devotion; for if the interests of the present life only, in which "one event happeneth to the just and to the unjust," were taken into calculation, the utility of prayer could scarcely be proved, and never be made conspicuous, at least not to the profane. As a matter of feeling, it is the expectation of a more direct and sensible intercourse with the Supreme Being in a future life, that imparts depth and energy to the sentiments which fill the mind in its approaches to the throne of the heavenly majesty. But the man of earth who thinks himself rich when he has enjoyed the delights of seventy summers, and who deems the hope of eternity to be of less value than an hour of riotous sensuality, can never desire to penetrate the veil of second causes, or to "find out the Almighty." Glad to snatch the boons of the present life, he covets no knowledge of the Giver.

Not so those into whose hearts the belief of a future life—of such a future life as Christianity depicts—has entered. They feel that the promised bliss cannot possibly spring from an atheistic satiety of animal or even of intellectual pleasures; but that the substance of it must consist in communion with him who is the source and centre of good. This belief and expectation sheds vigor through the soul while engaged in exercises of devotion; for such employments are known to be the preparatives, and the foretastes, and the earnests, of the expected "fulness of joy." The only idea which the human mind, under its present limitations, can form of a pure and perpetual felicity, free from all elements of decay and corruption, is that which it gathers and compounds from devotional sentiments. In cherishing and expressing these sentiments, it grasps, therefore, the substance of immortal delights, and, by an affinity of the heart, holds fast the unutterable hope set forth in the Scriptures. The Scriptures being admitted as the word of God, this intensity of devotional feelings is exempted from blame or suspicion; nor can it ever be shown that the very highest pitch of such feelings is in itself excessive or unreasonable. The mischiefs of enthusiasm arise, not from the force or fervor, but from the perversion of the religious affections.

The very idea of addressing petitions to him who "worketh all things" according to the counsel of his own eternal and unalterable will, and the enjoined practice of clothing sentiments of piety in articulate forms of language, though these sentiments, before they are invested in words, are perfectly known to the Searcher of hearts, imply that, in the terms and the mode of intercourse between God and man, no attempt is made to lift the latter above his sphere of limited notions and imperfect knowledge. The terms of devotional communion rest even on a much lower ground than that which man, by efforts of reason and imagination, would fain attain to. Prayer, in its very conditions, supposes, not only a condescension of the divine nature to meet the human, but a humbling of the human nature to a lower range than it might reach. But the region of abstract conceptions, of lofty reasonings, of magnificent images, has an atmosphere too subtile to support the health of true piety; and in order that the warmth and vigor of life may be maintained in the heart, the common level of the natural affections is chosen as the scene of intercourse between heaven and earth. In accordance with this plan of devotion, not only does the Supreme conceal himself from our senses, but he reveals in his word barely a glimpse of his essential glories. By some naked affirmations we are indeed secured against false and grovelling notions of the divine nature; but these hints are incidental, and so scanty that every excursive mind goes beyond them in its conceptions of the infinite attributes.

Nor is it only the brightness of the eternal throne that is shrouded from the view of those who are invited to draw near to him that "sitteth thereon;" for the immeasurable distance that separates man from his Maker is carefully veiled by the concealment of the intervening orders of rational beings. Although the fact of such superior existences is clearly affirmed, nothing more than the bare fact is imparted: nor can we misunderstand the reason and necessity of so much reserve; for without it, those free and kindly movements of the heart in which genuine devotion consists, would be overborne by impressions of a kind that belong to the imagination. Distance is known and measured only by the perception of intermediate objects. The traveller who, with weary steps, has passed from one extremity to the other of a continent, and whose memory is fraught with the recollection of the various scenes of the journey, is qualified to attach a distinct idea to the higher terms of measurement; but the notion of extended space formed by those who have never passed the boundary of their native province is vague and unreal. Such are the notions which, with all the aids of astronomy and arithmetic, we form of the distances even of the nearest of the heavenly bodies. But if the traveller who has actually looked upon the ten thousand successive landscapes that lie between the farthest west and the remotest east could, with a sustained effort of memory and imagination, hold all those scenes in recollection, and repeat the voluminous idea with distinct reiteration until the millions of millions were numbered that separate sun from sun; and if the notion thus laboriously obtained could be vividly supported and transferred to the pathless spaces of the universe, then that prospect of distant systems which night opens before us, instead of exciting mild and pleasurable emotions of admiration, would rather oppress the imagination under a painful sense of the so measured interval. If the eye, when it fixes its gaze upon the vault of heaven, could see, in fancy, a causeway arched across the void, and bordered in long series with the hills and plains of an earthly journey—repeated ten thousand and ten thousand times, until ages were spent in the pilgrimage, then would he who possessed such a power of vision hide himself in caverns rather than venture to look up to the terrible magnitude of the starry skies, thus set out in parts before him.

And yet the utmost distances of the material universe are finite; but the disparity of nature which separates man from his Maker is infinite; nor can the interval be filled up or brought under any process of measurement. Nevertheless, in the view of our feeble conceptions, an apparent measurement or filling up of the infinite void would take place, and so the idea of immense separation would be painfully enhanced if distinct vision were obtained of the towering hierarchy of intelligences at the basement of which the human system is founded. Were it indeed permitted to man to gaze upward from step to step, and from range to range of the vast edifice of rational existences, and could his eye attain its summit, and then perceive, at an infinite height beyond that highest platform of created beings, the lowest beams of the eternal throne, what liberty of heart would afterwards be left to him in drawing near to the Father of spirits? How, after such a revelation of the upper world, could the affectionate cheerfulness of earthly worship again take place? Or how, while contemplating the measured vastness of the interval between heaven and earth, could the dwellers thereon come familiarly, as before, to the Hearer of prayer, bringing with them the small requests of their petty interests of the present life? If introduction were had to the society of those beings whose wisdom has accumulated during ages which time forgets to number, and who have lived to see, once and again, the mystery of the providence of God complete its cycles, would not the impression of created superiority oppress the spirit, and obstruct its access to the Being whose excellences are absolute and infinite? Or what would be the feelings of the infirm child of earth, if, when about to present his supplications, he found himself standing in the theatre of heaven, and saw, ranged in a circle wider than the skies, the congregation of immortals? These spectacles of greatness, if laid open to perception, would present such an interminable perspective of glory, and so set out the immeasurable distance between ourselves and the Supreme Being with a long gradation of splendors, that we should henceforward feel as if thrust down to an extreme remoteness from the Divine notice; and it would be hard, or impossible, to retain, with any comfortable conviction, the belief in the nearness of him who is revealed as "a very present help in every time of trouble." But that our feeble spirits may not thus be overborne, or our faith and confidence baffled and perplexed, the Most High hides from our sight the ministries of his court, and, dismissing his train, visits with infinite condescension the lowly abodes of those who fear him, and dwells as a Father in the homes of earth.

Every ambitious attempt to break through the humbling conditions on which man may hold communion with God, must then fail of success; since the Supreme has fixed the scene of worship and converse, not in the skies, but on earth. The Scripture models of devotion, far from encouraging vague and inarticulate contemplations, consist of such utterances of desire, or hope, or love, as seem to suppose the existence of correlative feelings, and indeed of every human sympathy in him to whom they are addressed. And although reason and Scripture assure us that he neither needs to be informed of our wants, nor waits to be moved by our supplications, yet will he be approached with the eloquence of importunate desire, and he demands, not only a sincere feeling of indigence and dependence, but an undissembled zeal and diligence in seeking the desired boons by persevering request. He is to be supplicated with arguments, as one who needs to be swayed and moved, to be wrought upon and influenced; nor is any alternative offered to those who would present themselves at the throne of heavenly grace, or any exception made in favor of superior spirits, whose more elevated notions of the divine perfections may render this accommodated style distasteful. As the hearer of prayer stoops to listen, so also must the suppliant stoop from the heights of philosophical or meditative abstraction, and either come in genuine simplicity of petition, as a son to a father, or be utterly excluded from the friendship of his Maker.

This scriptural system of devotion stands opposed, then, to all those false sublimities of an enthusiastic pietism which affect to lift man into a middle region between heaven and earth, ere he may think himself admitted to hold communion with God. While the inflated devotee is soaring into he knows not what vagueness of upper space, he "whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain," has come down, and, with benign condescension, has placed himself in the centre of the little circle of human ideas and affections. The man of imaginative, or of hyper-rational piety, is gone in contemplation where God is not; or where man shall never meet him: for "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy, and who dwelleth in the high and holy place," when he invites us to his friendship, holds the splendor of his 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 enveloped in the thickest covering of obscurity.

The outward forms and observances of worship are manifestly intended to discourage and exclude the false refinements of an imaginative piety, and to give to the religious affections a mundane, rather than a transcendental character. The congregated worshippers come into "the house of God," the hall or court of audience, on the intelligible terms of human association; and they come by explicit invitation from him who declares that "wheresoever two or three are gathered together in his name, there he is" to meet them. And being so assembled, as in the actual presence of the "King of saints" they give utterance to the emotions of love, veneration, hope, joy, penitence, in all those modes of outward expression which are at once proper to the constitution of human nature and proper to be addressed to a being of kindred character and sympathies. Worship is planned altogether in adaptation to the limitations of the inferior party, not in proportion to the infinitude of the superior; even the worship of heaven must be framed on the same principle; for how high soever we ascend in the scale of created intelligence, still the finite can never surmount its boundaries, or at all adapt itself to the infinite. But the infinite may always bow to the finite. Those, therefore, who, inflated by enthusiasm, contemn or neglect the modes and style of worship proper to humanity, must find that, though indulgence should be given to their affectation on earth, no room can be allowed it in heaven.

The dispensations of the divine providence towards the pious have all the same tendency to confine the devout affections within the circle of terrestrial ideas, and to make religion an occupant of the homestead of common feelings. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous," and wherefore, but to bring his religious belief and emotions into close contact with the humiliations of the natural life, and to necessitate the use of prayer as a real and efficient means of obtaining needful assistance in distress? If vague speculations or delicious illusions have carried the Christian away from the realities of earth, some urgent want or piercing sorrow presently arouses him from his dreams and obliges him to come back to importunate prayer and to unaffected praise. A strange incongruity may seem to present itself, when the sons of God—the heirs of immortality, the destined princes of heaven—are seen to be implicated in sordid cares, and vexed and oppressed by the perplexities of a moment; but this incongruity strikes us only when the great facts of religion are viewed in the false light of the imagination; for the process of preparation, far from being incompatible with these apparent degradations, requires them; and it is by such means of humiliation that the hope of immortality, confined within the heart, is prevented from floating in the region of material images.

We have said that when an important object is zealously pursued in the use of means proper for its attainment, a mere intensity or fervor of feeling does not constitute enthusiasm. If, therefore, prayer has a lawful object, whether it be temporal or spiritual, and is used in humble confidence of its efficiency, as a means of obtaining the desired boon or some equivalent blessing, there is nothing unreal in the employment; and therefore nothing enthusiastic. But there are devotional exercises, which, though they assume the style and phrases of prayer, appear to have no other object than to attain the immediate pleasures of excitement. The devotee is not in truth a petitioner; for his prayers terminate in themselves; and when he reaches the expected pitch of transient emotion, he desires nothing more. 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 swollen 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 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 will 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 mere negative quantity—an incalculable fraction of positive entity! meanwhile the whole of his deportment betrays a self-importance that might be ample enough for a god.

Minds of superior order, and when refined by culture, may be full fraught with enthusiasm without exhibiting any very reprehensible extravagances; for taste and intelligence avail to conceal the offensiveness of error, as well as of vice. But it will not be so with the gross and the uneducated. These, if they are taught to neglect the substantial purposes of prayer, and are encouraged to seek chiefly the gratifications of excitement, will hardly refrain from the utterance of discontent, when they fail of success. Whatever physical or accidental cause may oppress the animal spirits, and so frustrate the attempt to reach the desired pitch of emotion, gives occasion to some sort of querulous altercation with the Supreme Being; or to some disguised imputation of caprice on the part of Him who is supposed to have withheld the expected spiritual influence. Thus the divine condescension in holding intercourse with man on the level of friendship, is abused in this wantonness of irreverence; and the very same temper which impels a man of vulgar manners, when disappointed in his suit, to turn upon his superior with the language of rude opprobrium, is, in its degree, indulged towards the Majesty of heaven. "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself," is a rebuke which belongs to those who thus affront the Most High with the familiarities of common companionship. We say not that flagrant abuses of this kind are of frequent occurrence, even among the uneducated; yet neither are they quite unknown. A perceptible tendency towards them always accompanies the enthusiastic notion that the principal part of piety is excitement.

The substitution of the transient and unreal, for the real and enduring objects of prayer, brings with it often that sort of ameliorated mysticism which consists in a solicitous dissection of the changing emotions of the religious life, and in a sickly sensitiveness, serving only to divert attention from what is important in practical virtue. There are anatomists of piety who destroy all the freshness and vigor of faith, and hope, and charity, by immuring themselves night and day in the infected atmosphere of their own bosoms. But now 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 in these inquiries have recourse to all the fine distinctions of a casuist, and use 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 affections 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 vigor 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 sentiment, 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 judgment, infelicity of temper, and inconsistency of conduct.

But it is alleged that the heart, even after it has undergone spiritual renovation, is fraught with hidden evils, which mingle their influence with every emotion of the new life, and that an often-renewed analysis is necessary in order to detect and to separate the lurking mischiefs. To know the evils of the heart is indeed indispensable to the humility and the caution of true wisdom; and whoever is utterly untaught in this dismal branch of learning is a fool. But to make it the chief object of attention is not only unnecessary, but fatal to the health of the soul.

The motives of the social, not less than those of the religious life, are open to corrupting mixtures which spoil their purity, and impair their vigor. As, for example, the emotion of benevolence, which impels us to go in quest of misery, and to labor and suffer for its relief, is liable, in most men's minds, to be alloyed by some particles of the desire of applause; indeed, there are nice and learned anatomists of the heart, who assure us that benevolence, when placed in the focus of high optic powers, exhibits nothing but a gay feathery coat of vanity, set upon the flimsiness of selfish sensibility. Be it so—and let men of small souls amuse themselves with these petty discoveries. But assuredly the philanthropist who is followed through life by the blessings of those "that were ready to perish," and whose memory goes down in the fragrance of these blessings to distant ages, is not found to spend his days and nights in pursuing any such subtile micrologies. Have the sons of wretchedness been most holpen by Rochefoucaulds and Bruyeres, or by Howards? If the philanthropist be a wise and Christian man, he will, knowing as he does the evils and infirmities of the heart, endeavor to expel and preclude the corrupting mischiefs that spring from within, by giving yet larger play to the great motives by which exclusively he desires to be impelled; he will, with new intentness, devote himself to the service in which his better nature delights, and bring his soul into still nearer contact with its chosen objects, and oblige himself to hold more constant communion with the miserable; and he will spurn, with renovated courage, the whispers of indolence and fear. Thus he pushes forward on the course of action, where alone, by the unalterable laws of human nature, the vigor of active virtue may be maintained and increased.

If, indeed, 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 hatch her eggs of mischief, let the vault of 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.

The moping sentimentalism which so often takes the place of Christian motives is to be avoided, 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 because it ordinarily produces inattention to the substantial matters of common morality. The mind occupied from dawn of day till midnight with its own multifarious ailments, and busied in studying its pathologies, utterly forgets, or remissly discharges, the duties of social life: or the temper, oppressed by vague solicitudes, falls into a state which makes it a nuisance in the house. Or, while the rising and falling temperature of the spirit is watched and recorded, the common principles of honor and integrity are so completely lost sight of, that, without explicit ill-intention, grievous delinquencies are fallen into, which fail not to bring a deluge of reproach upon religion. These melancholy perversions of Christian piety might seem not to belong, with strict propriety, to our subject; but, in fact, religious despondency is the child of religious enthusiasm. Exhaustion and dejection succeed to excitement, just as debility follows fever. Yesterday the unballasted vessel was seen hanging out all the gayety of its colors, and spreading wide its indiscretion before a breeze; but the night came, the breeze strengthened, and to-day the hapless bark rolls dismasted, without help or hope, over the billows.

Amid the various topics touched upon by Paul, Peter, John, and James, we scarcely find an allusion to those questions of spiritual nosology which, in later periods, and especially since the days of Augustine,[1] and very much in our own times, have filled a large space in religious writings. The Apostles believed, with unclouded confidence, the revelation committed to them, of judgment to come, of redemption from wrath by Jesus Christ, and of eternal glory:—these great facts filled their hearts, and governed their lives, and, in conjunction with the precepts of morality, were the exclusive themes of their preaching and writing. Evidently they found neither time nor occasion for entering upon nice analyses of motives; or for indulging fine musings and personal melancholies; nor did they ever think of resting the all-important question of their own sincerity, and of their claim to a part in the hope of the gospel, upon the abstruse dialectics which have since been thought indispensable to the definition of a saving faith. Assuredly the Christians of the first age did not suppose that volumes of metaphysical distinctions must be written and read before the genuineness of religious professions could be ascertained. The want, in modern times, of a vivid conviction of the truth of Christianity, is probably the occasional source of many of these idle and disheartening subtleties; and it may be believed that a sudden enhancement of faith—using the word in its unsophisticated meaning—throughout the Christian community would dispel, in a moment, a thousand dismal and profitless refinements, and impart to the feelings of Christians that unvarying solidity which naturally belongs to the perception of facts so immensely important as those revealed in the Scriptures.

In witnessing, first, the entreaties, and supplications, and tears of a convicted, condemned, and repentant malefactor, prostrate at the feet of his sovereign, and then the exuberance of his joy and gratitude in receiving pardon and life, no one would so absurdly misuse language as to call the intensity and fervor of the criminal's feelings enthusiastical: for, however strong, or even ungovernable those emotions may be, they are perfectly congruous with the occasion: they spring from no illusion; but are fully justified by the momentous turn that has taken place in his affairs: in the past hour he contemplated nothing but the horrors of a violent, an ignominious, and a deserved death; but now life, with its delights, is before him. It is true that all men in the same circumstances would not undergo the same intensity of emotion: but all, unless obdurate in wickedness, must experience feelings of the same quality. And thus, so long are the real circumstances under which every human being stands in the court of the Supreme Judge are clearly understood, and duly felt, enthusiasm finds no place; all is real; nothing illusory. But when once these unutterably important facts are forgotten or obscured, then, by necessity every enhancement of religious feeling is a step on the ascent of enthusiasm; and it becomes a matter of very little practical consequence, whether the deluded pietist be the worshipper of some system of abstract rationalism or of tawdry images and rotten relics; though the latter error of the two is perhaps preferable, inasmuch as a warm-hearted fervor is always better than frozen pride.

One commanding subject pervades the Scriptures, and rises to view on every page: this recurring theme, towards which all instructions and histories tend, is the great and anxious question of condemnation or acquittal at the bar of God, when the irreversible sentence shall come to be pronounced. "How shall man be just with God?" is the inquiry ever and again urged upon the conscience of him who reads the Bible with a humble and teachable desire to find therein the way of life. In subserviency to this leading intention, the themes which run through the sacred writings, and which distinguish those writings by an immense dissimilarity from all the remains of polytheistic literature, are those of guilt, shame, contrition, love, joy, gratitude, and affectionate obedience. And moreover, in conformity with this same intention, the Divine Being is revealed—if not exclusively, yet chiefly—as the party in the great controversy which sin has occasioned. The intercourse, therefore, which is opened between heaven and earth is almost confined to the momentous transactions of reconciliation and renewed friendship. When the Hearer of prayer invites interlocution with man, it is not, as perhaps in Eden, for the purposes of free and discursive converse, but for conference on a special business. "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Almighty, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

The same speciality of purpose and limitation of subject is plainly implied in the appointment of a Mediator and Advocate; for although the establishment of this happy medium of approach authorizes and encourages even a boldness of access to the throne of the heavenly grace, it not less evidently imposes a restriction or peculiarity upon the intercourse between God and man. As the Intercessor exercises his office to obtain the bestowment of the benefits secured to mankind by his vicarious sufferings, the suppliant must surely have those benefits especially in view. The work and office of the Mediator, and the desires and petitions of the client, are correlatives. "No man," said the Saviour, "cometh unto the Father but by me." It follows then, naturally, that those who thus come to the Father should keep in constant remembrance the great intention of the mediatorial scheme, which is nothing else than to reconcile transgressors to the offended Majesty of heaven. But this unalterable condition of all devotional services contains a manifest and efficacious provision against enthusiastical excitements; for the emotions of shame and penitence, and of joy in receiving the assurance of pardon, are not of the class with which the imagination has near affinity, and, in a well-ordered mind, they may rise to their highest pitch without either disturbing the powers of reason, or infringing the most perfect inward serenity, or outward decorum. In a word, it may be confidently affirmed that no man becomes an enthusiast in religion, until he has forgotten that he is a transgressor—a transgressor reconciled to God by mediation.

But when, either by the refinements of rationalism—a gross misnomer—or by superstitious corruptions, the central facts of Christianity have become obscured, no middle ground remains between the apathy of formality and the extravagance of enthusiasm. The substance of religion is gone, and its ceremonial only remains—remains to disgust the intelligent, and to delude the simple. This momentous principle is strikingly displayed in the construction of the Romish worship. That false system assumes the great business of pardon and reconciliation with God to be a transaction that belongs only to priestly negotiation; and as forgiveness has its price, and the priest is at once the appraiser of the offence, and the receiver of the mulct, it would be an intrusion upon his function, an interference that must derange his balances, for the transgressor to act on his own behalf, or ever to inquire what passes between the authorized agent of mercy, and the court of heaven. No room, then, is left in this system for the great and central subject of all devotional exercises. The doctrine of pardon having been cut off from worship, worship becomes unsubstantial. The expiatory death and availing intercession of the Son of God are taken within the rail of sacerdotal usurpation; and of necessity, if Jesus Christ is at all to be set forth "crucified before the people," it can only be as an object of dramatic exhibition. This is the secret of the popish magnificence of worship. Music, and painting, and pantomime, and a tinsel declamation, must do their several parts to disguise the subduction of the essentials of devotion. The laity, having nothing to transact with God, must be amused and beguiled, "lest haply the gospel of his grace" should enter the heart, and so the trading intervention of the priest be superseded.

The great purpose of the Romish worship, which is to preclude all genuine feelings by substituting the enthusiasm of the imagination, is accomplished, it must be confessed, with consummate skill, and a just knowledge of the human mind. The end proposed will, manifestly, be best attained when the emotions which spring from the imagination are made to resemble as nearly as possible those that belong to the heart. The nicest imitation will be the most successful in this machinery of delusion. Hence it is, that while all those means of excitement are employed which quicken the physical sensibilities, the deeper sensibilities of the soul are also addressed, and yet always by the intervention of dramatic or poetic images. A plain and undisguised appeal to the heart is unknown to the system.

If it be for a moment forgotten, that in every bell, bowl, and vest of the Romish service there is hid a device against the liberty and welfare of mankind, and that its gold, and pearls, and fine linen are the deckings of eternal ruin; and if this apparatus of worship be compared with the impurities and the cruelties of the old polytheistic rites, great praise may seem due to its contrivers. Nothing in Christianity that might subserve the purposes of dramatic effect has been overlooked; and even the most difficult parts of the materials have been wrought into keeping. The humiliations and poverty which shroud the glory of the principal personage, and the horrors of his death; as well as the awful beauty and compassionate advocacy of the virgin mother, the queen of heaven; the stern dignity of the twelve; the marvels of miraculous power; the heroism of the martyrs; the mortifications of the saints; the punishment of the enemies of the church; the practices of devils; the intercession and tutelary cares of the blessed; the sorrows of the nether world, and the glories of the upper;—all these materials of poetic and scenic effect have been elaborated by the genius and taste of the Italian artists, until a spectacle has been got up which leaves the most splendid shows of the ancient idol-worship of Greece and Rome at a vast distance of inferiority.[2] But of what avail is all this sumptuous apparatus in promoting either genuine piety or purity of manners? History and existing facts leave no obscurity on the question; for the atrocity of crime, and the foulness of licentiousness, have ever kept pace with the perfection of the Romish service. Those nations upon whose manners it has worked its proper influence with the fullest effect, have been the most irreligious and the most debauched. Splendid rites and odious vices have dwelt in peace under the same consecrated roofs; and the actors and spectators of these sacred pantomimes have been wont to rush together from the solemn pomps of worship, to the chambers of filthy sin.

The substitution of poetic enthusiasm for genuine piety may, however, take place apart from the decorations of the Romish service; but the means employed must be of a more intellectual cast: eloquence must take the labor on itself, and must subject the doctrines of Scripture to a process of refinement which shall deposit whatever is substantial and affecting, and retain only what is magnific, pathetic, or sublime. And yet the principles of protestantism, and, in some respects, the national temper, and certainly the style and spirit, of the devotional services of the English Church, all discourage the attempt to hold forth the subjects of evangelical teaching in the gorgeous colors of an artificial oratory. And if the evidence of facts were listened to, such attempts would never be made by those who honestly desire to discharge the momentous duties of the Christian ministry in the manner most conducive to the welfare of their hearers. A blaze of emotion, having the semblance of piety, may be kindled by descriptive and impassioned harangues, such as those that are heard, on festival days, from French and Italian pulpits; but it will be found that the Divine Spirit, without whose agency the heart is never permanently affected, refuses to become a party in any such theatric exercises; these emotions will therefore subside without leaving a vestige of salutary influence.

Yet is there perhaps a lawful, though limited range open, in the pulpit, to the powers of descriptive eloquence. The preacher may safely embellish all those subsidiary topics that are not included within the circle of the primary principles on which the religious affections are built; for in addressing the imagination on these accessory points, he does not incur the danger of founding piety altogether upon illusions. The great and beautiful in nature, and perhaps the natural attributes of the Deity, and the episodes of sacred history, and the diversities of human character, and the scenes of social life, and the secular interests of mankind, may, by their incidental connection with more important themes furnish the means of awakening attention, and of varying the sameness of theological discourse. Or even if no unquestionable plea of utility could be urged in recommendation of such divertisements, at the worst they are not chargeable with the desecration of fundamental doctrines; nor do they generate delusion where delusion must be fatal. But it is not so with the principal matters of the preacher's message to his fellow-men, which can hardly be touched by the pencil of poetic or dramatic eloquence without incurring a hazard of the highest kind, inasmuch as the excitement so engendered more often totally excludes than merely impairs genuine feelings.

If the taste of an audience be quickened and cultivated, nothing is more easy to the teacher, or more agreeable to the taught, than a transition from the sphere of spiritual feeling to the regions of poetic excitement. Intellect is put in movement by the change; conscience is lulled; the weight that may have rested on the heart is upborne, and a state of animal elasticity induced, which, so long as it continues, dispels the sadness of earthly cares. Let it be supposed that the subject of discourse is that one which, of all others, should be the most solemnly affecting to those who admit the truth of Christianity—the awful process of the last judgment. The speaker, we will believe, intends nothing but to inspire a salutary alarm; and with this view he essays his utmost command of language, while he describes the sudden waning of the morning sun, the blackening of the heavens, the decadence of the stars, the growing thunders of coming wrath, the clang of the trumpet, whose notes break the slumbers of the dead, the crash of the pillars of earth, the bursting forth of the treasures of fire, and the solving of all things in the fervent heat. Then the bright appearance of the Judge, encircled by the splendors of the court of heaven; the convoked assemblage of witnesses from all worlds, filling the concave of the skies. Then the dense masses of the family of man, crowding the area of the great tribunal; the separation of the multitude; the irreversible sentence, the departure of the doomed, the triumphant ascent of the ransomed.

Compared with themes like these, how poor were the subjects of ancient oratory! And such is their force, and such the freshness of their power, that, though a thousand times presented to the imagination, they may yet again, whenever skilfully managed, command breathless attention while the sands of the preacher's hour are running out. Nor ought it to be absolutely affirmed that excitements of this kind can never produce salutary impressions; or that such impressions never accompany the hearer beyond the threshhold of the church, or survive a day's contact with secular interests: peremptory assertions of this sort are unnecessary to our argument. The question to be answered is, whether this species of movement be not of the nature of mere enthusiasm, and whether it does not ordinarily rather exclude than promote religious feelings.

In reference to the illustration we have adduced, there might be room for the previous inquiry, whether, on sound principles of interpretation, the language of Scripture ought to be understood as giving any warrant whatever to those material images of terrible sublimity with which it is usual to invest the proceedings of the future day of retribution. But let it be granted that the customary representations of popular oratory are not erroneous; and that when the preacher thus accumulates the physical machinery of terror, he is truly picturing that last scene of the terrestrial history of man. Even then it were not difficult, by an effort of reasoning and of meditation, and by following out the emotions of our moral constitution, to realize the feelings which must fill the soul on that day when the secrets of all hearts shall be published; and these feelings may be imagined, on probable grounds of anticipation, to be such as must render all exterior perceptions dim and make even the most stupendous magnificence of the surrounding scene to fade from the sight. It is nothing but the present torpor of the moral sentiments that allows to material ideas so much power to occupy and overwhelm the mind; but when the soul shall be quickened from its lethargy, then good and evil will take that seat of influence which has been usurped by unsubstantial images of greatness, beauty, or terror. What are the thunderings of a thousand storms; what the clangor of the trumpet, or the crash of earth, or the universal blaze; what the dazzling front of the celestial array, or even the appalling apparatus of punishment, to the spirit that has become alive to the consciousness of its own moral condition, and is standing naked in the manifested presence of the High and Holy One. That time of judgment which is to dispel all disguises, and to drag sin from its coverts into the full light of heaven, will assuredly find no leisure for the discursive eye; one perception, one emotion, will doubtless rule exclusive in the soul.

No extravagance or groundless refinement is contained in the supposition that, in the great day of inquiry and award, the moral shall so overwhelm the physical, that when, by regular process of evidence, according to the forms of that perfect court, conviction has been obtained of even some minor offence against the eternal laws of purity or justice—an offence which, if confessed on earth, would hardly have brought a blush upon the cheek—the heart will be penetrated with an anguish of shame that shall preclude the perception of surrounding wonders:—on that day it will be sin, not a flaming world, that shall appall the soul.

If anticipations such as these approve themselves to reason, it follows that the humblest and the least adorned eloquence of a purely moral kind, of which the only topics are sin and holiness, guilt and pardon, takes incomparably a nearer and a safer road towards the attainment of the great object of Christian instruction than does the most overwhelming oratory that addresses itself chiefly to the imagination. Nay, it may be affirmed that such oratory, however artfully elaborated, and however well intended it may be, is nothing better than a curtain, finely wrought, indeed, with gorgeous colors, but serving to hide from men the substantial terrors of the day of retribution.

Nothing, then, can be more glaringly inequitable than the manner in which the imputation of enthusiasm is frequently advanced in relation to pulpit oratory. On the ground either of common sense or of philosophical analysis, the epithet should be assigned to him who, in neglect or contempt of the substance of his argument, draws an idle and profitless excitement from its adjuncts. And on the same ground we must exculpate from such a charge the speaker who, however intense may be his fervor, is himself moved, and labors to move others, by what is most solemn and momentous in his subject. Now to recur for a moment to the illustration already adduced. In the anticipations we may form of the day of judgment, there are combined two perfectly distinct classes of ideas; on the one side there are those images of physical grandeur and of dramatic effect which offer themselves to the imaginative orator as the proper materials of his art, and which, if skillfully managed, will not fail to produce the kind of excitement that is desired by both speaker and hearer. On the other side there are, in these anticipations, the forensic proceedings which form the very substance of the fearful scene; and these proceedings, though of infinite moment to every human being, tend rather to quell than to excite the imagination, and therefore afford the preacher no means of producing effect, or even of keeping alive attention, unless the conscience of the hearer be alarmed, and his heart opened to the salutary impressions of fear, shame, and hope. In looking then at these themes, so distinct in their qualities, we ask—Is he the enthusiast who concerns himself with the substance; or he who amuses himself and his hearers with the shadow? Yet is it common to hear an orator spoken of as a sound and sober divine, who, for maintaining his influence and popularity, depends exclusively, constantly, and avowedly, upon his power to affect the imagination and the passions by poetic or dramatic images, and who is perpetually laboring to invest the solemn doctrines of religion in a garb of attractive eloquence. Meanwhile a less accomplished speaker, who—perhaps with more of vehemence than of elegance—insists simply upon the momentous part of his message, is branded as an enthusiast, merely because his fervor rises some degrees above that of others. Ineffable folly! to designate as enthusiastical the intensity of genuine emotions, and to approve as rational mere deliriums of the fancy, which intercept the influence of momentous truths upon the heart. Yet such is the wisdom of the world!

It cannot be pretended that the distinction between genuine and enthusiastic piety turns upon a metaphysical nicety: nothing so important to all men must be imagined to await the determination of abstruse questions; and if the distinction which has been illustrated in the preceding pages is not perfectly intelligible, it may safely be rejected as of no practical value. But surely 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, adjunctively, 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 many, that if, in the history of an individual, 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 inamissible 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 appear that, in times like the present, when religious profession undergoes no severe probation, the danger of substituting some species of 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 nothing else than 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 analyze the complex and occult varieties of its emotions. But we may instantly and certainly know whether we do the things which he whom we call Lord has commanded.