Superstition assails us in a number of forms, which however may be all traced to the same cause. Thus, for instance, we have a variety of signs, and portents, and warnings of death, or misfortune,-more indeed than it would be easy to enumerate,-beginning with the equality or inequality of numbers, or the mode of the flight of birds, and terminating with the windingsheet on our candles, or the peculiar howling of the midnight dog under our window. So, again, from the same principle, fear is developed in darkness, or during the exhibition of any natural unexplained phenomena; an eclipse has sown terror in the hearts of millions; the power of unknown evil rests upon the sable wing of midnight; the spirit of the storm is heard in that peculiar agitation of the atmosphere which precedes its immediate approach; the thunder of the summer cloud has been considered as the warfare of the spirits of the air; and even at the present day, and in this Christian country, it is very frequently deprecated as an object of apprehension, instead of being gratefully received as the source of great good; and as the appointed means of expressing the eternal unchanging benevolence of the Almighty to his ungrateful creatures, rather than as an indication of his anger.

We are next assailed with a long list of tales of supernatural appearances, of sudden lights, and peculiar forms, of ghosts, and sundry other matters; and these have not only constituted a ground of unnecessary alarm, but have even formed a basis for precaution, for suspicion, for unjust, or injurious, or absurd action and thus some ocular spectra, the offspring of a diseased brain, have become motives for conduct; and, still worse, this very conduct, which is a remote consequence of disobedience to God, is made to assume the appearance of doing the immediate will of Him who is infinitely wise and holy.

Another demonstration of the same principle is to be found in the history of certain revelations and impressions, producing a very considerable influence upon the modes of thought, and habits of action. An idea, and very frequently an insane idea, depending upon some recollected image, whose law of association we may perhaps be unable to trace, is invested with an attribute of sanctity, as being the immediate suggestion of Him who constantly watches over his creatures. In a mind predisposed to superstition, this idea gains so great an influence over the attention, that it presently engages it exclusively; and the patient has now approached the

confines of that undefined territory, in which he will range lawlessly, from an impression that he is acting under the immediate agency and guidance, sanction and direction, of that Being, with whom originated, as he verily believes, the early delusive impression, that formed the first link in this chain of deviation from healthy function.

A variety of the same tyrant principle may be observed in ascribing the operation of natural bad passion to direct satanic influence; by which means persons sometimes excuse their misconduct on the plea of not acting from the will, but under the resistless impulse of a power of evil superior (by the supposition) to the highest effort of that will. I am aware of what the Scriptures of truth teach us respecting the existence and the agency of that spiritual enemy, who goeth about seeking whom he may devour: but the worst that he can do against us is in the way of evil suggestions, adapted to our corrupt propensities. The Creator has endued him with no active power over us; he cannot operate upon us except through the medium of our own will; but persons are often better pleased to throw the blame of that which is evil in their hearts upon the influence of Satan, than upon their own indulgence of

sinful passion and corrupt propensity; as if the facility with which they fall into the snare of the devil, and are taken captive by him, did not equally prove that permanent tendency to wrong which showed that the heart was deceitful and desperately wicked. What is commonly called (and very frequently is) temptation, is often ascribed to this especial agency, when it really consists in the aptitude of the mind for certain evil modes of action, which are embraced when presented to it, because there exists a corresponding feeling, a principle from within, harmoniously combining with every outward ac. tion of a similar character.

Another step in advance, and we meet the whole tribe of dreams, visions, reveries, and the like,-frequently the offspring of recollected impressions disjoined from their original trains. of association; or resulting from a bad habit of indulging the love of mental wandering without guidance, or fixed rule, or definite object; or depending upon the organ of mind, variously irritated by immediate or intermediate connexion or sympathy with the morbid action of such other organ of the body as may happen to form the nucleus of that preponderating disorder of function which overturns the balance of health.

Next appears for consideration the lengthened

train of vulgar prophecies. We need not go beyond the instance of Johanna Southcote, to perceive that there is no folly so great but that it will find a corresponding trait of imbecility in the character of many with which it readily assimilates; and if this future should happen to possess a pretended association with religion, the dupe of the designing, or of the infatuated and misled, may become the disciple, or the founder, of a new sect, a zealous partizan of its views, a devotee to his newly-formed opinions, and a worshipper at the altar he has erected; he receives the seal of his safety, and becomes the fully-formed enthusiast.

One step more in the descending scale of credulity, and we meet with a belief in the performance of vulgar miracles: as if the Author of nature would permit his laws to be interrupted, except to prove his own Divinity, to show that His is the creative power, that this power is superior to the laws of the universe, and that therefore he is God. Of the claims to miraculous agency in these latter days, the history of animal magnetism may be referred entirely to a well-timed employment of certain known physical laws on the part of the designing magnetizer, and to the influence of an exalted imagination under such physical agency on the part