Before closing this article, we have one request to present to all our readers. It is this, that they ponder maturely what has been written, before dissenting from its truth. "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." We are not at all insensible to the surpassing beauty of much that is found in this poem. It does not fall in with our present design, however, to descend to an elucidation of particular passages. All that we now propose is to put our readers in full possession of what we suppose to be the true idea in the light of which the whole book is to be explained.

ARTICLE LXV.

Piety and Philanthropy.

BY PROF. J. A. THOME.

OUR present theme embraces two cardinal facts; one is, that in all earth-born religions, and in all hell-born corruptions of the true religion, Piety and Philanthropy have been set forth as irreconcilable antagonisms; the other is that in the Christian religion these principles have been harmonized and conjoined as the two essential elements of one system: and this junction of Piety and Philanthropy in religion we present as not only the peculiarity but the glory of Christianity.

There have been two very diverse ideals of religion prevalent among men. According to one it is a system of worship, with its cumbrous rites, its interminable genuflections and rigorous austerities: according to the other, it is a principle of mercy, with its tears and its tenderness, with its humane devisings and its tireless benefactions. The one makes religion a thing of forms, the other of feelings-the one condenses "the whole duty of man" into lofty sentiments and sound doctrines, the other affirms it to consist in sweet sympathies and good deeds. The one finds its proud embodiment in the robed Priest; the other points complacently for its exemplification to the good Samaritan. Both claim exclusive right to the Lord Jesus Christ, as their divine exemplar and prophet. Of course these religions must be mutually adverse. Each engrosses the entire ground-cach excludes the other. The one is all God-ward, and the other is all man-ward. The God-ward is too lofty to notice the low concerns of mortals, too pure to sit down at meat with publicans and sinners, too deeply absorbed in its devotions to be diverted or disturbed by the cries of suffering humanity. The man-ward is too active to be devout, too busy to pray, has too many irons in the fire of benevolence to bestow a thought upon the worship of the Most High. To its votarics the Sabbaths are a weariness, the solemn assemblies they cannot away with. They want to be up and doing! The costly perfume.

which meek-eyed homage sacrifices at the shrine of Divinity, they would sell and give the proceeds to the poor. This suggests, by the way, that these man-ward religionists are sadly unfortunate in their patron saint! Judas the founder of this Eleemosynary system, was 'a THIEF. Rough language to use in the present connection, where we are speaking of the disciples and apostles of an improved scheme of religion. But peradventure it will appear in the progress of this discussion that this religion-robbing as it does the fanes and altars of Piety to enrich Philanthropy-is nothing better than thieving!

We have then before us two distinct and variant religions. We have designated them, and shall in this article, by the terms Picty and Philanthropy. Piety is the name we give to the religion which is God-ward in its aspect. Philanthro py designates that of the man-ward eye.

The course which we propose now to take, and in which we humbly invite thee, friendly reader, to follow us, is to trace the origin and progress of these two religions, to consider the grounds of their mutual hostility, and to view them united in a divine economy by the fusing energy of Christianity.

The only pure source of religion is Revelation. But proud man rebels against this intimation of his incompetency to fabricate a religion for himself. Why should he, the great discoverer of hemispheres, planets and satellites, the inventer of the arts of civilized life, and the framer of systems of philosophy, be deemed inadequate to the task of devising at scheme of religion? Why should not he, who, with the sufferance of Deity, has usurped the dominion of the elements, who has made fire, vapor, winds, waves, magnetism and electricity the vassals of his imperial will, who has stretched his steam tracks across oceans, pushed them through the rocky hearts of mountains, and suspended them, wire-hung, over frightful chasms and rushing torrents, and who, grander still, from his terrene observatory, pilots the comet as he bickers through the etherial main, and curves the aphelion cape, jutting into the stormy deep of Chaos and Old Night-why should not he, ascending the awful mount and surrounding himself with thick clouds and thunders and lightnings, write upon tables of stone religion's code? Verily, man has not shrunk from arrogating this most sacred and most guarded of the divine prerogatives. He has made unto himself systems of religion; nay he has not hesitated to take the last step that

mortals can take; he has framed gods corresponding with his depraved ideals of Divinity.

Man-made religions will be only the reflections or objective forms of ideas previously held, and these will be as the character of those with whom they originate, or by whom they are assimilated. The image of Deity which lies enshrined in substantial perfection in the intelligence, suffers so many distortions in its passage to development through the perverted will and the vitiated sensibility, that it bears at last scarcely a lineament of its original loveliness. To use, with a slight adaptive alteration, the celebrated comparison of Burke "The ideals of religion passing out of unregenerate minds into practical form, like the rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and volitions, the primitive ideas of the reason undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original directions."

In all unrenewed minds the religious principle will sustain some kind or degree of perversion-differing in different individuals as the general moral tone is more or less depraved, or as its depravity takes some particular type. One whose veneration is vigorous, and whose social sentiments and sympathies are either naturally defective, or are dwarfed by habitual disregard of his fellow men, or are poisoned by a cherished misanthropy, will frame for himself a religion modified by these peculiar conditions. On the contrary one whose veneration is feeble and inoperative, while his social susceptibilities are uncommonly great, will have a religion of corresponding characteristics. And since the majority of mankind, incluing the enlightened who are unregenerate, are in their moral structure misshapen, or disproportionately developed in some one direction, it will follow that their religion will be one-sided, partial. In one you will see the bodying forth of the God-ward religion; in another, of the man-ward. Veneration, an inborn sentiment, modified by selfishness the grand controller of the natural mind, originates the God-ward religion-a gory system, in which Piety is seen, vampirelike, fattening upon the life's blood of humanity, while her pinions fan the wounds she makes," till deluded humanity deems the sacrifice a passport to the skies.

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It has been truly said that man is "a religious being;" but it has been vainly hoped by such fair speeches to conceal the

deeper truth that man is a selfish being. He is both. In sentiment he is religious-in heart selfish. These are his two natures, which, through a gross misconception of their respective characters and reciprocal congenialities, have occasioned so much perplexity in reference to the true character of man. His religious nature has been to many superficial minds the ground of a fond persuasion that he is not destitute of the principle of true virtue; but unfortunately for these complacent culogists of human nature, man shares his religious sentiments in common with "devils damned"—he possesses them because he cannot extinguish them, any more than he can put out the light of his deathless being.

Man then has a religious and a selfish nature. His religious nature demands or exacts from him services and_ceremonies, of the nature of worship, due to a Supreme Being. His selfish nature, jealous of its own, stands by to give character, and to prescribe limits, to the exercise of his religious nature. So long as it can control the religious principle, it has no objection to its existence or exercise; it rather prefers them, just as the world prefers the existence of the Church to its extinction, provided it will be conformed to the law of the world. The selfish nature in determining the character of the religious, denies to it entirely the attribute of benevolence, together with all those charities and humanities which flow therefrom. It also prohibits all self-denial for others' good. In a word, it excludes man wholly from the scope of the religious sentiments, save as it makes him their victim. God is not only the Supreme, but the sole object of this religion; and even God is not the object of love. Selfishness will not admit of love at all-in fact it is not capable of it. God is to it the object of fear. His righteous law with its awful penalty, his almighty power, his omnipotence, his omniscience, make him an object of fear. Therefore he is an object of worship-selfishness, terrified but unsubdued, presiding over the gloomy rites. Here is the God-ward religion. It is strengthened by the views which a selfish heart entertains of God's position toward his creatures. Selfishness makes a God after its own image, and he is one who regards man just as it does. He is the august enthronement of selfishness. His supremacy he employs in subsidizing to his own aggrandizement all creatures and things. He is an Infinite Exacter. The universe is his estate, the angels his overseers, and men his plantation-slaves. Their groans, tears, blood, their services, sacrifices, and sufferings are but his rightful