influence of Infidelity, virtue, and every feeling of the human heart which prompts one man to succour and assist another, must languish and die; and society must be insecurely held together by a slavish obedience to laws to which necessity has given birth. Let the Infidel then contemplate the fruits of his doctrines: Hope banished from the human breast; Fear (the fear of man and of his laws), the only reasonable motive to action; Conscience stripped of her authority; Virtue without a sanction; Vice, except in his worst excesses, without a check; Passion freed from all restraint; and Reason-cold and calculating reason-the sole tyrant of the head and heart. Again we say, let the Infidel pride himself in his supposed superiority to all prejudice, and wrap himself closely in his garb of self-conceit; but, if reason has spared one feeling of his nature, let him keep his cold and cheerless doctrines to himself.

We have spoken of the constant association of Infidelity with Revolution : and we may be allowed to make a passing allusion to its frequent union with low and debasing vices. We have said that the doctrines of Infidelity and Revolution are often propounded from the same chair; we are sorry to be obliged to add that even in our times the same doctrines are being publicly taught in conjunction with the worst tenets of the most licentious schools of antiquity. A triple alliance has been lately formed between Infidelity, Revolution, and Licentiousness; and apostles have gone forth to preach their doctrines with a zeal which would do honour to a better cause. If these enthusiasts deserve no other praise, they must at least be commended for their consistency; for they are indeed consistent who, first denying the existence of a God and of an immortal soul, go on to rob all human laws of their authority, and end by making the habits of the brute the best example for a reasonable and intelligent being. Not content with instilling their poison into the minds of the poor and ignorant, the leader of these fanatics has dared to approach the throne itself; and he who should have guarded its sacred precincts from all pollution has given him free access to the presence of a virgin queen. And these are times of social improvement-of advancing and reforming intellect! Oh for those days of dark and groping ignorance, when the heart was monarch of the head, when the cheek could mantle with a blush, and the eye was not ashamed to glisten with a tear! Better far the darkest of those bygone days than this our boasted light. If knowledge bears such fruits, then ignorance is bliss indeed. What! must the page of history be sullied with so foul a stain? Shall it be said in times to come, that he who had overturned God's altars, set all human laws at defiance, and degraded man to the level of the beast, was tamely suffered to approach the throne of England's monarch, whilst the appointed guardian of England's honour pleaded ignorance as his sole excuse? Ignorance! why a child could have learnt all that need be known by one short question. "You propose to regenerate society: I approve your object; but I am bound in honour and duty to my queen and country to know of no source of improvement but the religion of the Bible: do you hope to spread the knowledge of this religion, and make it more binding on the heart and consciences of men? If not, I must withhold all assistance from your schemes." As long as England has an established religion, so long are her ministers bound to discourage to the utmost all who would destroy it. Such was the rule in days of ignorance: has Reason proved the rule an error, and made it less stringent now?

The open accession of licentiousness to the league formed by Infidelity and Revolution supplies us with a new argument in favour of our position, that Reason is not accountable for the tenets of the Infidel. “It is unreasonable," says the Anarchist," to yield obedience to the laws of man ; all men are equal, and are accountable for their actions to themselves alone.” "Man is but an animal, born to eat, drink, sleep, and die," cries the Sensualist: "Reason bids him live the life of a beast.' "There can be no God," says the Infidel, “a belief in the existence of such a being is altogether contrary to reason." It is notorious that the apostles of these new doctrines make constant appeals to Reason, and profess to take her as their guide; and we think we may fairly draw the inference, that they derive their Infidelity from the same source with their principles of revolution and sensuality; and that in other instances, as in the one under consideration, reason is merely put forward as the ostensible, and not the real source of disbelief. If any one believe that men are, can be, or ought to be equal, the argument we formerly used can have no weight with him; if any one can bring himself to think that men may and ought to live as live the brutes which perish, the argument we now employ is wasted upon him. But if, in his opinion, the tenet that men are equal is falsely attributed to Reason, and the doctrine that men should lead the life of brutes, is none of Reason's framing, but the deformed offspring of the Passions, then will he scarcely hesitate to admit with us that Infidelity is no more to be traced to Reason as its source than are the strange and revolting doctrines with which it is associated.

But we must quit this theme, and resume the thread of our discussion. We have just illustrated our position by analogy; we may now support it by more direct and positive examples.

One bright summer morning, a young man, genteelly dressed, was found lying dead beneath a tree in one of our royal parks: near his right hand lay an open razor, and in his left was a small phial containing a few drops of poison. The body lay in a pool of blood which had flowed from more than one deep wound. A jury was summoned, the body was identified, and witnesses were examined, one of whom deposed that on the previous evening he had met the deceased walking towards the spot he had chosen as the scene of his last rash act; he looked well, and conversed calmly and rationally. The jury returned the usual verdict of temporary insanity. We knew this young man, and were well acquainted with his sad history. He came to London whilst yet a stripling, for the purpose of education, alone, and entirely his own master. His appearance was most prepossessing, and his manners and deportment in the highest degree pleasing and gentlemanly. He was in fact a man whom men admire, and women are prone to love. On his very first arrival in London the tempter saw him, and from that moment his doom was sealed; from that moment his actions were not his own; an unseen hand scattered temptations in his path, and led him onward to his ruin. The place of his abode was, unknown to him, chosen by his destroyer, and the same roof sheltered the tempter and the tempted. He did not fall at once; but slowly, and with measured step, temptation lured him on. Through every avenue of sense the subtle poison flowed to the unconscious soul: the pencil and the pen were alike put in requisition, and the worst productions of England's noble but most depraved poet were placed, as it were by accident, within his reach. He fell at last; and sin engendered shame, and shame suggested sins of deeper dye; but conscience struggled hard, and fear withheld his hand. Then

was it that he first began to wish that there was no God; then first arose a fierce and fearful struggle between Conscience and Passion—and Passion, feeling himself overmastered, called Reason to his aid. Conscience spoke of a God, who threatened sin with punishment; and Passion prompted Reason to disprove his existence. The task was full of difficulty; and Reason performed her part but badly: she supplied him with arguments, but she brought him no consolation: at length he fled, and sought in foreign lands the peace denied at home. But change of scene failed to banish from his mind the bitter recollections of the past, and he returned unchanged and unconsoled-an infidel in name; in heart, a miserable and despairing wretch. It was soon after his return that he committed suicide.

We believe that in this example we have traced the common history of almost all those dreadful tragedies which a mistaken spirit of humanity considers as the work of madness. If all men who disbelieve, or state that they disbelieve, the existence of a God, are insane, then is our present task most profitless; for why attempt to bring conviction home to a madman? And shall it be said that if infidelity is not madness, suicide is? We, for our own parts, think that suicide is so natural and reasonable a result of infidelity that the man who commits that act because he is an infidel may on that very ground be fairly acquitted of insanity; for what can be more reasonable than that a man who is convinced that there is no God should calmly balance the joy and the sorrow, the pleasure and the pain, of this short and fleeting existence, and decide accordingly. If his lot is miserable, death offers a sure relief from all his sufferings; and no power exists to forbid him to put an end to his own life, or to punish him for his act. If it be said that suicide must be the act of insanity, because it is so strongly opposed to an inherent love of life, we contend that it is not more opposed to that love of life than is Infidelity itself to that instinct which has inspired men of every age and condition with a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being. Reason has struggled with this natural belief-has condemned it as ill-founded, and rejected it. Why should reason struggle less successfully with this inherent love of life? We repeat that the infidel is justified by his own principles in putting an end to his life whenever he pleases; and if he has staked his happiness on the accomplishment of some dream of ambition, or his fortune on the cast of a die, and fails, he acts the part of a fool if he consents to live on in disappointment, when his own principles give free scope to the accomplishment of all his purposes, and justify self-destruction. We see nothing which can reasonably restrain him from the commission of suicide except a cowardly fear of a moment's pain; and we can scarcely regard him as a consistent infidel if he does not act as if there was no world beyond the presentno immortal soul,-no avenging Deity.

We have given an instance of Infidelity, prompted by the commission of one crime, bringing remorse in its train, and ending in suicide. It would not be difficult to find examples of disbelief arising out of habits of life opposed to the dictates of conscience, but stopping short of the commission of those crimes for which the laws of man provide a punishment. It is in haunts of dissipation that Infidelity finds his most devoted supporters and his most promising pupils; there he rears his unblushing front, and deals forth most lavishly his promises and his encouragements. And there, too, talent oft resorts, led by that excitement which

gives to reason the quickness and the force of instinct; to wit, its sparkling play; to imagination, its dazzling brilliancy. From these Infidelity borrows his keenest weapons Reason arms him with subtle sophistries, wit is his Ithuriel's spear, his test of truth; and fancy clothes him in her robe of dazzling colours. And some who see him thus arrayed, with philosophers, wits, and poets in his train, wonder and admire, and would fain join the gay procession but that the harsh features of crime peep out amidst the gay and showy pageant, and an indistinct and undefined gloom hangs over all.

For

We shall give one example only of the union of Licentiousness and Infidelity in the same person. Šome years since, when we were at Cambridge, the general topic of conversation at the social meetings of the undergraduates was a new-comer of extraordinary talent and promise. He had just come from a large public school, and was understood to be prepared to achieve the highest distinction in both triposes. We soon found that the general expectation was doomed to suffer disappointment. He had fallen into habits of low debauchery, and spent his days and nights in scenes of riot and dissipation; and it was not till the body was weakened by excess, and the senses were blunted to all impressions of pleasure, that he began to turn his mind to studies which require intense application and patient thought even from men of exalted talent. the usual period of his studies at the University he continued to lead the same strange life of alternate dissipation and study, and at length attained a distinguished place in the mathematical tripos." It was some time after this before the natural consequences of his excesses showed themselves, but at length his body was given over to consumption, and his mind to madness. Hitherto he had freely professed himself an Infidel; but now religion became the constant theme of his weakened and wandering intellect, and it was sad to witness the words and actions of his former life strangely mingling with the sacred theme of religion—the name of God with oaths and curses, and ribald jestings. The mind and the body grew daily weaker and weaker, till at length he was laid, a complete wreck, in the grave.

We admit that this sketch is imperfect, inasmuch as we have no exact means of knowing whether Infidelity followed habits of dissipation or sprung up together with them. It is sufficient for our present purpose to state that they co-existed. Let not the Infidel hope to turn this example into an argument in favour of his own doctrines. He may say, perhaps, that in this instance it was not till Reason was deposed from her throne that the thought of religion found a place in the mind; and that the very fact of a sort of belief in religion springing up in this clouded and weakened state of intellect, whilst it was excluded when the mind was possessed of all its strength, only confirms the view which he takes of the association of a belief in religion with inferior powers of mind. We shall speak to this point presently; but, in the meantime, we will give our own version of this change from scepticism to an obscure and cloudy belief. We think then that this young man's habits of life were so strongly opposed to the dictates of his conscience that he was obliged to reinforce his passions with the authority of reason, and that the natural sentiment of religion, which we believe to exist in every human being, was forcibly held in check; but, when the powers both of the mind and of the body failed him, when Reason was short of her strength, and the will of its power, then the

feeling which had long striven to assert its authority recovered its natural hold upon the mind, and mingled itself thus strangely with the thoughts and habits of his former life. We believe that some such process takes place in the minds of most, if not of all, Infidels. When the intellect is powerful, and the will is strong, and the body healthy, and death seems far distant, the mind is easily pre-occupied and not easily alarmed; the pursuits of pleasure or of study leave little leisure for serious thought; the natural feelings may be kept in stern subjection, and the suggestions of conscience may be excluded by a strong effort of the will. But when sickness comes, and death threatens, then does the mind for the first time turn its thoughts upon itself; then do the feelings, no longer forcibly and sedulously excluded by an overmastering will, assume their proper place and vindicate their just authority, and conscience re-asserts her rights. Now comes the dreadful struggle; reason, conscience, feeling, all mingle in the strife: the past, with all its clustering memories; the present with its vivid consciousness of suffering; the future-the obscure, the threatening future-fill the mind by turns with regret, with doubt, and with despair. No longer sustained by pride, Reason begins to own her weakness, to trace her errors to their real source, and, bursting the bonds that bound her to passion, takes her stand with conscience, the stern reprover of her former self.

But let us for a moment contemplate the short sketch we have given of the Infidel, in the light in which an Infidel might be disposed to view it. He was an Infidel when his reason was in the height of her power; he became darkly religious when she was obscured; and he may regard this as a proof that Infidelity is a natural consequence of strong reasoning powers, and religion a proof of mental imbecility. Fortunately for us the answer to any such objection is always at hand. We have but to mention the names of almost all the greatest discoverers of modern times-of Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Boyle, Black, Dalton, Herschel, not merely as proofs that men of surpassing talent are not necessarily Infidels, but as a counterpoise to any weight of authority derived from mere example, which the Infidel may be disposed to throw into the scale against us. But though he dare not openly assert that great reasoning powers give a natural tendency to Infidelity, he may still contend that disbelief in the existence of a God is a necessary result of the exercise of pure reason, and that there is no evidence that Infidelity has always been accompanied by those errors of conduct which justify us in the view we have taken, that reason is always hired to plead the cause of passion. He may, perhaps, support his view by one or two rare examples of Infidels distinguished for sober and moral behaviour and general rectitude of character; and he may dare us to the proof that there is here any subserviency to passion. We accept his challenge; and we tell him of a passion which not only does not always lead to crimes against individuals or against society, but which has a natural tendency to produce an outward sobriety and regularity of behaviour-we mean Pride. The nature of this passion is revealed in the common expressions," he is too proud to tell a lie," "he scorns to commit a dishonest action," "he is above deceit." Pride is the very essence of that honour which so large a portion of mankind substitute for higher and better motives, which puts satisfaction in the place of forgiveness, and substitutes politeness for charity. This passion, joined as it sometimes is to kind and gentle