accustomed to rely upon their judgments, and to look upon imagination as being, in itself, a deceitful and misleading faculty. A complete picture of the species I have described, instead of inspiring confidence, raises in them instant suspicion. They know too well the nature of the insuperable barrier which separates the visible from the spiritual world, not to suspect that such complete and minute information concerning it must have its source in the imagination. This suspicion is powerfully confirmed by the striking similarity of the supposed spiritual scenes to those of the external world. It is impossible not to perceive the direct tendency of such pictures, taken as matters of Revelation, to establish the perfect correspondence of the world we live in, to that in which Christians hope to dwell in eternal happiness. The reflecting individual, who thus finds himself unawares on the road to the New Jerusalem of Count Swedenborg, and the renovated Earth of the once orthodox Millenarians, shrinks away in well-grounded fear of mental degradation. At that moment, he finds himself completely irreligious; the artificially-contrived system of his faith bursts like a bubble before his eyes. With the vulgar of all ranks there is an easy remedy in such cases. Does the picture of a wonder, the account of a Revelation, begin to fail of effect, you have only to confirm it by a greater wonder of the same kind; a second Revelation enlarging the first, and giving a more minute account of its circumstances, are enough to invigorate the fainting belief, the ground of which is the impression that the Narrative leaves on the Imagination,

Analogous to this is the mode in which unintelligible doctrines work upon each of these classes of minds. Such a doctrine as that of Original Sin, and its fatal consequences

to mankind, together with the contrivance of Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Atonement, seize upon the imagination as vast pictures of more than gigantic transactions, which appear to float in the regions of eternity and infinity. What vividness of colouring is respecting miraculous stories, -an apparent connectedness of cause and effect is in regard to such dogmas. Disobedience to an all-powerful Being (argues the puzzled-headed logician) deserves punishment: as God is înfinite, the punishment must be infinite; consequently, all mankind must perish. But God is infinitely merciful, therefore, mankind must not perish. Let God, one of the persons of a Triple God, who is nevertheless the simplest Unity, bear the punishment; so his Justice-an inflexible attribute-will be satisfied. The sequel is clear; one thing follows naturally from another, and the whole system, especially when enlivened by the miracles which are supposed to have attended its development, bears its own evidence in the simple statement.

But alas! for the man who cannot put off the habit of examining every thing, and to whom the closest logical series of inferences (I do not mean that there is anything of this kind in the system before us) is totally worthless, if the first link is an assumption. In vain does he strive to subdue doubt by means of sympathy with some set of believers, who " I think with their hearts." He surrenders himself with the most resolute determination never to give way to his former doubts; but, in spite of his will, the doubts occupy the same position in his mind, and acquire distinctness day by day. When, in the various devotional practices by which the mental sufferer wishes to fortify his belief, he makes an effort to realize the pictures on which that belief depends, he finds them disturbed and weakened by the

power of the judgment; they take the character of phantasmagoric scenes, one moment they appear distinct, the next, they lose all sharpness of outline, and vanish into a confused mixture of fading tints. Whatever bodily influences affect the mind, necessarily affect these grounds of imaginative faith. In illness, in danger,—just when they should be distinct and fixed,—they are found most feeble and changing. I well remember my distress, when, in a fit of illness, after my resumption of Christianity according to the Church of England, I found that I really did not believe in the Trinity, or in the Atonement. My acquiescence had been an act of the will; my Reason had been forcibly silenced by that will; it now resumed its authority, and I found myself cruelly deceived. Nevertheless, the early habits of my mind connected this incapacity of belief with crime and punishment. I cannot, indeed, describe the periods of mental agony which I have gone through. It did not avail that I repeatedly fell upon my knees; the vehemence of my prayer could not remove an intimate conviction that I was pursuing phantoms. As soon, however, as I gave full freedom to my judgment, and arrived at the conclusion that Christianity is not Orthodoxy—that God has not furnished us with means of coming to any degree of certainty in regard to any church-doctrines whatever, that he has not provided us even with sufficient proofs of the authenticity of the Books which make up the Bible, much less with any satisfactory voucher of their being inspired, -as soon as that whirling cloud of theological doctrines was scattered before the pure light of reason, my soul found itself in perfect repose. My trust in God, as I know him in the sanctuary of my conscience, grew day by day, in spite of trouble and suffering: all fears of dangers after this

life vanished at once before the certainty of my sincere wish and constant effort to live according to God's will: the contradictions and absurdities of a local Heaven ceased to represent a future life as a mockery; and, ever since that period, I may say that my existence is totally religious. I do not mean that I live in mystic raptures, or that I have subdued the feelings of impatience which my constant sufferings are apt to raise: far from it. But in the midst of even childish peevishness, the superior faculty of my mind looks with pain upon these infirmities, and strives to bring my whole being into conformity with the will of God.*

One of the, to me, most important results of my long and active attention to these subjects is, the conviction that what is called SPIRITUALISM leads directly and inevitably to materialism in religion,-in plainer words, to IDOLATRY. I hope soon to explain my words, so as to remove all appearance of paradox: indeed, I have already shown that, what is called supernaturalism, i. e. making religion inseparable from a long series of apparitions, such as we find in the Books which bear the name of Moses, reduces it to a work of the Imagination, a faculty which is essentially material, as its name, derived from IMAGE, plainly denotes. This imaginative religion, supported by the universal tendency of mankind to give to things invisible the shape of things visible, is, I am convinced, the greatest impediment to the existence and propagation of that spiritual character of the true worshippers, who worship God, the Spirit, "in spirit and in truth."

Many Philosophers, and almost all Divines, have positively asserted that the human mind discovers the existence of

*This was written when my life was despaired of by my friends, and when my most vehement desire was to be released by Death.

God by a law of its own nature. I have attentively examined this assertion, and am convinced that, on the contrary, there are few men who believe in the true, the spiritual God. This belief, on the contrary, is one of the highest attainments of our developed mental existence. Yet, though high, that attainment is within the reach of even a child, if well instructed. The only method, however, which can lead to it, is that of resolutely rejecting every proffered assistance of the Imagination. But the opposite is the plan of all Priesthoods. The universality of Idolatry is a proof that Imagination can never lead to God.

Ing.-I do not understand you.

Ans. It would surprise me if you did; for this is a subject on which no person with whom I was ever acquainted had bestowed a discriminating thought. Now, I beg you to tell me what is Idolatry.

Ing.-I have always thought that it is bestowing upon visible objects the worship due to God.

Ans. Do you imagine it possible that any rational being, who believes in one God, the Source of all existence, can fall into that absurdity? I am convinced no man was ever guilty of such a contradiction.

Ing.-Why, then, have men, at all times, prostrated themselves before the works of their own hands?

Ans. Because they had not the remotest notion of the Spiritual Deity. The gods of the idolaters are indistinct images of beings with a will and passions like those of the men that conceive them. To say that whoever has such conceptions of the invisible agencies of nature acknowledges a Deity, is a mere abuse of words. What the Savage, as well as every man in a low stage of civilization, acknowledges, is, a superhuman power exercised by invisible agents,