afterwards readily relinquished. They turn the sensuous element into a new channel, and provoke a reaction in its favour, and they produce many undeniable cases of madness. We find a powerful and painful testimony to this in Dr. Maudesley's recent and most admirable book on the " Pathology of the Mind." We quote a passage or two quite startling in their truth :-"The practical religion of the day, the real guiding gospel of life, is money-getting; the professed religion is Christianity. Now without asserting that riches are not to be gotten by honest industry, it may be maintained that the eager passion to get rich-honestly it may be, but if not, still to get rich-is often inconsistent with the spirit of the gospel professed. The too frequent consequence is, that life becomes a systematic inconsistency or an organised hypocrisy. With a profession of faith that angels might adopt, there is too often a rule of practice which devils need not disdain." "I do not hesitate to express a conviction that the excitement of religious feelings, and the moroseness of the religious life, favoured by some religionists, are habitually injurious to the character, and a direct cause of insanity. Young women who betake themselves too fervently to religious exercises, and thus find an outlet for repressed feeling in an extreme devotional life, fly to a system which expressly sanctions and encourages a habit of attention to the feelings and thoughts." Still more strongly does this accomplished philosopher and physician say "The fanatic religious sects which every now and then appear in a community, and disgust it by the offensive way in

which they commingle religion and love, are really inspired by an uncontrolled and disordered sexual instinct." "Exaggerated self feeling, rooted often in sexual passion, is fostered under a spiritual cloak, and drives its victim either to madness or to sin." He strongly denounces, too, those who use the weaknesses of women to minister to their own base ends under a religious guise.

Sensationalism and terrorism, in fine, by misrepresenting Christianity, are driving many to utter infidelity. Intelligent men are saying "If Christianity be a theatrical excitement, founded on the agonies and blood of God's Son himself--a tragedy, with Christ for the chief performer; if it be a flight of fireworks to which the vast majority of the human race are to form the fuel; if it be a great coming scheme of conflagration to the world and glorification to such a small church as can be gathered out of it by the advent year 1871 or 1873; then we for our part are done with Christianity, we cannot swallow these versions of it, and we would prefer to stand back from it altogether." Oh! if our well-meaning obscurantists were but knowing what mischief they are doing by their narrowness of spirit, their conventionalism of creed, their pumping up of false and faded excitements, their belated terrorisms, and their weak, withered cant, to the very cause they seek, and perhaps seek sincerely, to support, they would change their tactics, they would alter their scheme of thought and their mode of talk; they would become humbler, sadder, and wiser men, and would at length learn that the clock of the world does not stand

still at the hour in 1770, when the brave George Whitfield left it, or at the hour in 1834, when Edward Irving died; but is moving onwards and onwards, at an always accelerating rate, and for evermore.

CHAPTER VIII.

NATURE AND EXTENT OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.

WE propose annexing to this little volume the follow

ing thoughts on the Nature and Extent of Liberty of Conscience, especially as that liberty should be exercised in the light of the present day. The subject is delicate and difficult, and we cannot commence without praying Him who is the Infinite Light, and who above all beings enjoys perfect liberty, to aid us in its consideration.

Liberty of thought and liberty of conscience differ chiefly in this, that while the one refers to thought employed upon all subjects, including scientific, political, philosophical, and secular, the other refers to the exercise of the mind upon moral and religious topics exclusively. Conscience, when stripped of mystical jargon, is just a name for the intellectual power of man employed upon a particular set of subjects, and the moral sense is simply the feeling springing out of that exercise. All agree that liberty of thought and liberty of conscience are, within certain limits, native and inalienable rights of man; and the only question on which there is difference of opinion is in reference to the nature and extent of these limitations.

Now, in reference to thought on common subjects, it is obvious that one has a right to entertain any proposition

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that is not contradictory, and that is supported by a proper amount of evidence. I may be wrong in judging or weighing the evidence that convinces me, but no one can quarrel with me for entertaining, after inquiry, my opinion, whatever he may think of its validity. Even proverbially "every one may have his own think," and you can only alter or seek to alter that think by producing fresh evidence or exposing the fallacy of what has been the medium of your conviction. Here comes in the question about authority-Should not authority have weight in determining my thought? Certainly; but that authority is not and ought not to be absolute. Suppose it to be the authority of parents: parents are not infallible. Should it be that of great thinkers and philosophers: they are not infallible either. Seniors have and should have influence from their longer standing; but seniors too are men, and though they have the start of their juniors, that start is not infinite. Authority, in short, is only a weaker kind of evidence, weaker than that of the senses, weaker than that of the reasoning and investigating understanding, and is, like other evidence, to be carefully examined and scrupulously weighed before it is accepted as conclusive.

In reference to Conscience, it is somewhat different. Conscience, or the Reason of man working upon moral and religious subjects, is naturally free to believe whatever it sees upon evidence to be right. It is not mere feeling that stirs within a man when he abhors what is evil and cleaves to what is good. It is feeling, indeed, but feeling which may be called the solution of a principle which has been founded upon evidence, evidence either gathered by