which, at best, can be only presumptive; but which loses all its little weight, in proportion as the long and large prevalence of such corruptions has been obtained by force."

In a further portion of this able discourse, he characterizes the constitution of the Establishment, as to be sustained, "not because it leaves us at liberty to have as little religion as we please, without being accountable to human judicatures; but because it exhibits to our view, and enforces on our conscience, genuine Chistianity, free from the superstitions with which it is defiled in other countries." Thus the whole calumny was clearly met, and fully defeated. It was never renewed.

But the sentiments of this great theological philosopher are always important for their own sake. In his sermon preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in 1738, he strikingly states the hazard of superstitious observances: "Among creatures naturally formed for religion, yet so much under the power of imagination as men are, superstition is an evil which can never be wholly out of sight. But even against this, true religion is a great security, and the only one. True religion takes up that place in the mind which superstition would usurp, and so leaves little room for it, and likewise lays us under the strongest obligations to oppose it. On the contrary, the danger of superstition cannot but be increased by

the prevalence of irreligion, and by its general prevalence the evil will be unavoidable. For the common people, wanting a religion, will, of course, take up with almost any religion which is thrown in their way. And amidst the infinite vicissitudes of the political world, the leaders of parties will certainly be able to serve themselves with that superstition which is getting ground, and will not fail to carry it to the utmost length their occasions require. The general nature of the thing shows this, and history and fact confirm it."

It would be singularly interesting to conceive with what eyes this powerful investigator of the human mind would have looked upon the aspect of Europe during the last half century. He would have there seen the ancient process reversed, and superstition bringing forth the monstrous birth of atheism; the popular passion for ceremonial suddenly darkened and envenomed into a furious hatred of the spirit of religion; rapine outraging the name of reform; and Christianity, stripped of the encumbering vestures and embroidered vanities heaped on it by ancient ignorance; not in zeal but in persecution; stripped, not to give freedom to its progress, or to develope the original grandeur and force of its form, but for sacrifice; to be dragged, like its great Master, through popular humiliation, until it perished under popular frenzy, and left its blood upon the land.

The history of superstition is yet to be written. In the hands of a man of ability and virtue, it might form one of the noblest contributions to moral knowledge. The deep and subtle seizure of the weaknesses of the human mind by religious corruption, in every age; its solemn and mystic profligacy in the east; its festive, elegant, and poetic licentiousness in Greece; and its graver pomp, yet not less prodigal vice, in the more imperial temperament of pagan Rome,-would form a succession of the most powerful, and instructive picturings ever held up as a warning to human error. But a new creation must be thrown on the canvass, in the ages which follow the fall of paganism. The figures of the procession of Evil must be of a bolder, darker, and more unearthly aspect. Persecution, implacable hostility, frenzied zeal, and malignant avarice of power, must precede and follow the car of superstition. The grace and beauty of the ancient festivals must be abandoned for the sullen displays of popular rage and inquisitorial virulence the light must be from the torch that laid waste the lands of the unfortunate refugee, or from the flame which consumed the martyr; the dungeon and the scaffold must be perpetually before the eye. The historian would find the subtlety of this strong temptation still assuming new shapes, according to the character of the nations which it was to deceive. Its steps through our

own annals are still traceable by the ruins of a dynasty, and the blood of civil war. Assailing the vulnerable point of England, in the full triumph of the Reformation, by an unhallowed zeal, a passionate hypocrisy, and a worldly self-denial; it loaded the popular mind with a weight of religious severities, under which it was sure to break down, and equally sure, in the effort of recovery, to fling off all religion. We have lived to see another shape of the tempter-the spirit of evil, no longer crouching, like Satan at the ear of Eve, and bewildering the national heart with the dreams of enthusiasm, but starting up in its own proper shape, a giant armed,"―atheism and revolution proclaiming defiance to earth and heaven, threatening overthrow to the frame of nations, and finally repelled, less by the power of human resistance, than by the almost visible interposition of heaven. In what remaining form of still more startling hostility it may yet try the strength of Europe, and from Europe, spread over all nations and involve mankind, must be told by posterity. But we have the clearest evidence from human nature, and the strongest declarations from a higher authority than human experience, that it shall yet spring up from its temporary dungeon, and ride in the last tempest of the passions of man.

Butler's promotion to the see of Durham had placed him in the enjoyment of all that his bene

volence had so long wished, and more than his ambition had ever desired. He could now give way to his charity; and it seems probable that the greater part of his income was thus employed. He had always been remarkable for liberality in the dispensation of his means; the most obvious and pressing exercise of the public virtues of a Christian. He was a warm and steady friend to the poor. But his well-regulated mind also acknowledged the fitness of sustaining the rank in which he was placed; and his residence at Durham was distinguished for the stately hospitality suitable to the see. Like his patron, bishop Talbot, he received the nobility and chief gentry of the north at his palace three times a week, during a considerable portion of the year; and entertained them as became their prelate and friend. The general narrowness of ecclesiastical incomes in our day precludes this graceful and kindly interchange of hospitalities, and by condemning the superior clergy to seclusion, nearly as much as the inferior to a perpetual struggle with circumstances, forms one of the most serious impediments to that friendliness, and frequency of connexion, which would at once strengthen the church, and spread religious intelligence among the people. But the munificent spirit of this distinguished person extended itself to every object. While at Bristol he contributed four thousand pounds to the repairs of the palace;