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stand, the last developments of man's being will be essentially spiritual; that the capacities and powers of the spirit will be brought into action, both for good and evil; and that even philosophy, whilst assenting to no higher power than reason, will unconsciously, in many of its forms, betray the influence and presence of the spiritual in man.

Superstition is faith abused in its exercise to credulity. Yet, though a diseased condition, there is greater hope of moral health in it than in scepticism, which is the very atrophy of the heart and spirit. Whatever may have been the errors or eccentricities of the past, faith was an essential element in its moral constitution; and it is because of the reviving force of this element-it is because that faith is coming back to many men, and because unconsciously they find its affinities in the pursuits of the past-it is because of these things that there is so great an enquiry into subjects based on a belief of the supernatural.

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Faith, we know, may be perverted and abused again as of old. An unintelligent superstition is as much to be deplored as ever; gross ideas and notions concerning supernatural agencies and beings are as much to be deprecated; but, in all the wild dreamings and theories concerning the powers and extent of magic to which superstition has given birth, we see a truth not to be despised. We wish that those who are so lavish in their contempt of the errors by which it has been overlaid and defiled would recognize and hold it. St. Paul, in writing to the Ephesians, says, "We wrestle not against flesh and blood; but against principalities; against powers; against the rulers of the darkness of the age; against wicked spirits in heavenly places." When our Lord speaks of the Comforter, it is always in such language as supposes personal attributes and actings; and, when of Satan, it is of a person. In the theology of a very large class, however, the words of our Lord and the exhortation of the apostle are virtually reduced to unmeaning forms of speech. The Holy Ghost is considered as an influence-Satan as a symbolization-and the wicked spirits, of whom Paul speaks, as metaphorical designa tions of fierce and unsubdued passions. The prevailing infidelity of the day is the denial of divine and supernatural personalities; and so strongly do the teachings of what is called a liberal education tend to weaken religious credence, that though, as an article of faith, we verbally confess to the personal existence of evil spirits, what are said to be the rational deductions of philosophy lead us to doubt it, or so far to qualify the subject as to nullify the reality and consequences of

that existence to us. We much fear that the faith of few would stand a searching examination on this great and positive article of Christian doctrine.

Those who have promoted the "diffusion of useful knowledge" have, we think, some little to answer for in this respect. They have proposed to themselves, as one of the objects to be accomplished, the destruction of vulgar errors and prejudices. The traditionary and legendary lore of the cottager has been supplanted by tales of operative wonders and factory blessings; Mother Shipton has been turned out of doors to make way for Jeremy Bentham; whilst the "Seven Champions of Christendom" and the "Fairy Tales" have been banished from the nursery in order to give place to Miss Martineau's stories of political economy. The motive in all this has been, doubtless, very good and praiseworthy; we have nothing to say against it; but we question the amount of benefit that is said to have accrued; and we are quite certain that, in meddling with the harmless superstitions of the poor and the faith of children, a system of thought has been introduced neither suited to their condition nor age. The philosopher who is described in the romance to have formed a man did it artistically enough up to a certain point; but the moment the ereature started into life it stood forth a monster of incongruities, frightful to behold, and mischievous to every thing around it. The maker knew nothing of the secret affinities, the hidden springs, the finer fibres, the wondrous sympathies, which give to the human form its beauty, to human life its vigour, and to human thought its power: and thus would it be, if society should ever be moulded after the conceptions of philosophical· genius, and cut and shaped and fashioned into form according to the newly discovered theories of association. A thing would be made well enough to look at whilst it was inert; but a monster of deformity when it should be quickened into action, because it would want all the secret moral machinery which God alone can give and understand; which regulates. the whole in harmony; and by what men call irregularity or disorder, in one portion, operates in compensating good to another. Nature has her own work and philosophy its pro per sphere. It is unwise to seek a benefit to one portion of society by creating a condition in another which is unnatural. The poor and children (especially the rural poor) live in regions of faith-faith is proper to their estate. It is what is naturally suggested by all the associations which the elements of nature, in which the poor man labours, create: it is what naturally grows out of the influences by which the tender age

of infancy is surrounded. To break down faith in the one because it is mixed with superstition-to destroy its fascinations in the other because they are poetic fictions-is the present effort of philosophical sagacity; and we do not think it either well or wisely employed. As far as we have seen, it can only end in the destruction of faith itself. Take this out of the heart of the poor, and you leave them nothing to console: them in their poverty: take it out of the nature of a child and you destroy its innocence.

There are many popular superstitions which, though they may be errors, are not vulgar errors. A thousand influences, the value of which is lightly thought of, or passed by, have been at work in their creation, and many things which indirectly chasten the spirit and soften the heart are associated in their maintenance. In times when tradition was the only. chronicler of history, truth took fantastic forms, but still taught. her lessons; and in districts where the eye and mind are ever in contact with wild and beautiful scenery, it is not to be wondered at that the spirit of man should be tempted into another. region than the material. The superstition that abides in cellars, and amongst the debased of large cities and manufac turing towns, is doubtless a hag; but that which walks the mountain path and dwells by the waters of the glen has a beauty in keeping with the elements around, giving to every object a double charm. The one is gross in its form, and often cruel in its instincts-the other poetic in its birth, and mostly humanizing in its influence. There is some difference, we take it, between the disposition that yields credence to the charm of the quack doctor or tortures a poor animal to death, and faith in the legends of the Brocken or the secondsight of the highlander. If utilitarian philosophy will insist upon it, that they are the same in kind, we are sure that the latter is of nobler degree than the former; and that, in rooting it out of man's composition, many things, which he cannot afford to lose and which are interwoven with it, would be destroyed likewise. There are national superstitions which are the moral monuments of other races, mighty and powerful in their day, but long since mingled with the dust of ages, Brittany and Wales are full of them. It would, indeed, astonish some to learn, as was remarked before in a former number, how many druidical customs yet prevail in Chris+ tendom. The antiquarian condemns the ruthless hand that destroys the material remnants of other days; and why should every memento of the moral condition of the past be extirpated? If the handiwork of our fathers be discernible in the one, surely the spirit that gave the hand its "cunning" is in

dieated in the other. The peasant of the Alps, when the storm lours on the summit of Mount Pilátre, beholds with fear the restless spirit of the wretched Roman in the cloud. He believes a tale which many generations have credited. Will he be a better man when the flippant explanations of some spruce philosopher shall have destroyed its influence? Men, in times of trouble, have been solemnized at the spectral sight of fighting armies and fiery portents in the skies. Will the world gain aught when the books of useful knowledge shall have enabled them to look upon the like with placid eye and unbeating bosom? This new-born squeamishness, which cannot bear the homeliness of the people's creeds, is busied in putting the popular mind into Quaker garments of decent proprieties; but it little recks how they straiten the heart and confine the spirit. One sure result of that which it proposes is the abatement of faith in all things supernatural; if it succeed, it will strike a heavy blow at the foundations of Christianity. As it is, religion already lies a bleeding from the wounds inflicted by a false philosophy. A neological system has obtained by the application of whose principles, the great and mighty miracles which God wrought for the deliverance of his ancient people out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage, are frittered down to the "natural effects of natural causes.' Destroy the belief in supernatural existences of an evil nature, and faith in the ministry of good angels must follow; yet we are taught, by the Church, to pray" that they may succour and defend us on earth.” Take away from the mind of the people every element of faith in the world of spirits, and the reality of that communion of the saints which unites those who are alive on earth, and those who sleep in Jesus in one holy and solemn brotherhood, will cease to exercise its beautiful and peaceful influence. The heart of man, as God made it and can renew it, is the richest treasure of which the world can boast; but if modern philosophy is to lay her cold hand upon it, and fashion it as she will, its fair lustre will be dimmed and all its jewelled adornings be destroyed. Better far that mankind, in retaining some errors, should believe too much, than that in parting with them they should lose faith altogether. "There is (says Lord Bacon) a superstition in avoiding superstition, when men think to do best, if they go furthest from the superstition formerly received. Therefore care should be had, that (as it fareth in ill purgings), the good be not taken away with the bad, which commonly is done when the people is the reformer." And this the people soon will be, to their own hurt and damage, if the principles of modern liberalism find acceptance with them.

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ART. III.-Ellen Middleton: a Tale. By Lady GEORGIANA FULLERTON. Second Edition. London: Edward Moxon.

OF all the usual forms for conveying knowledge, and awakening corresponding impulses to good in the human soul, none has been abused like the novel. The world has seen many bad histories, many bad poems, and many bad biographies; but the name of the number of bad novels is legion. Hence the necessity of their entire banishment from our shelves, as an unmixed evil incapable of correction, has been earnestly discussed in certain quarters, and settled with a peremptory decision, from which to appeal was to become guilty. We ourselves will so far yield to this verdict as to agree that indiscriminate and uncontroled indulgence in reading even what are reputed to be good novels is seriously injurious to the healthy condition both of the intellect and heart; but we apprehend that the verdict of entire condemnation must be considered as rescinded, even where it was once most sacredly observed, since attempts have been made and allowed in those quarters to use them as vehicles for conveying discussions on the most awful dogmas and mysteries of the Gospel. This, we think, is an abuse which, in its way, is not much less jurious than the other abuses. However, we see in this recognition of the lawfulness of such attempts a tacit acknowledgment that to banish them from the world is held to be hopeless. It becomes, then, such as have undertaken to become the guardians of the morality of the press, and to examine, professionally, the kind of intellectual food which the Christian may take, if not to his nourishment at least not to his injury, to deliver, from time to time, their decision upon such works of fiction as have taken, or are likely to take hold, upon the public mind. If novels may be written, and will most surely be read, the question should be examined as to what constitutes goodness in this branch of literature; for, as there are good and bad poems, so, if the novel be a real genus of literature, will there be good and bad novels. Of course, we have little concern with the mere historical or political novel; still less with that basest imitation of a base phase of human society - the fashionable_novel. These we can usually leave to our contemporaries. But when a work appears which visibly trenches upon the pulpit and the sermon, by its well-sustained pretensions to inculcate what may be called dubious Christian practices and doctrines, we are bound to step forth to utter our voice either of commendation or reproof. For the sermon-novel has a powerful advantage over the sermon-proper,

VOL. XX,Y

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