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idea of one great forgiving Father, who seeks to bless the whole universe of people. The blind," he says, “are mostly all of a religious turn of mind. They all make a point of attending divine service, the majority of them being of the old religion.” A large portion of the women who sell goods in the streets are attentive," he says, "to religious observances. • We, poor gals,' said one, ain't very religious; but we all of us thanks God for every thing, even for a fine day.'' The fruitstall-keepers, he says, are profuse in blessings. "Bless God for all things," said one to Mr. Mayhew, “and bless every body!" Ignorant, unenlightened, may often be this piety. "No, sir," said one poor street-seller,-though perhaps the answer might prove that he was not involved in what constitutes real ignorance,-“I can't say I know what I'm prayen' for at mass, only that it's right." No one, however, can have difficulty in tracing their sense of holy things to the great common source of those elevated desires and celestial aspirations which constitute the fountains of religion. In fact, the common thoughts of humanity, not unfrequently, are seen to conduct persons even to those acts of detachment and to those changes of life which are presented, for our admiration, in history, poetry, and romance, as in those lines of the old play,

"Adieu, fond hope! farewell, you wanton powers!

I am free again ;

Thou dull disease of blood and idle hours,

Bewitching pain,

Fly to the fools that sigh away their time!

My nobler hope, to heaven climb,

And there behold beauty still young,

That time can ne'er corrupt, nor death destroy;

Immortal sweetness by fair angels sung,

And honour'd by eternity and joy!

There lives my peace, thither my thoughts aspire,

Fond hope declines, this heavenly hope grows higher."

But not alone are the common thoughts of humanity suggestive of religion generally; we may add, that they would, if left to their own bias, embrace it, in a certain form, with certain appanages, certain reserves, certain conditions, as significative of its truth, and this leads to considerations which must occupy us in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XX.

WELL, mate, go on. There's no knowing what you won't make me believe myself at last, though I am such a little goose, and you know I am. After proving that I was as worth listening to as the learned at your universities, that I was more a philosopher than many great authors of books in print, and then, from the fact of having only a common mind and being a woman, that I was imbued with a deep sense of religion, I suppose, from what you have just said, that you are now going to make out that I am as well instructed in matters of the latter kind as any of the good people aunt talks about, who, she says, are better informed than all others in regard to them. But what would you have me say? I own I like to hear you read, though, trust me, I do not feel the least prouder of myself for all your demonstrations, as you call them. Well, little poppet, I do not think that either am I myself a bit prouder for having read them to you, since I sincerely wish that, as I use the writings of others, so I might avail myself of another's tongue. What you say now, is only corroborative of the view we have been taking of these grave matters; for it proves that common thoughts, even when awakened to a consciousness of their value, have not spoiled any thing, as, indeed, there was no danger of their doing, either in your or in any other person's case. So, now, after this mutual congratulation, let us proceed lovingly, though I think we cannot be more pleased with each other after it than we were before, that is, of course, if one of us can speak for somebody besides himself.

"We do not make our thoughts; they grow in us,
Like grain in wood: the growth is of the skies."

As we have reason to admire the excellence of common thoughts, in regard to the admission of religion in general, so with respect to the form in which they would accept, leave, or apparel that influence, when the facts of revelation are once granted, it would be difficult to deny, or even to over-estimate, their importance. The considerations suggested by this remark,

notwithstanding your late prophetic surmises, little independent spirit, may be pursued without our leaving that neutral ground of common observation on which we have hitherto found ourselves sitting, like any other couple of common lovers, contented and unambitious listeners, only feeling that instinct of immortal life which prompts them to provide for it, and timidly whispering a few things, as on such a subject it behoves especially persons like themselves, mere ordinary mortals, to do. A stranger might possibly think that certain views involved in this chapter argue a double and concealed object in the mind of the speakers who propose them or represent them as common. That a man should have no preferences of his own, be their source what it may, is not to be pretended in showing the excellence of common things, for such a state of mind would be phenomenal, and odious, perhaps, as such. But it is to be considered, that whatever these views may be, they flow directly here from the main professed subject, and are but inevitable logical deductions from common thoughts. Whatever they may turn out to be, their being what we shall find them is merely, as far as we are concerned, an accident, a coincidence, however happy and striking these may be thought by any one viewing them in disconnexion with our especial subject, or calculated to impress him in particular with a conviction of the excellence of common thoughts, in relation to truth of this highest order. Some, overlooking the necessity imposed on us by the subject, will try to warn us off, as from ground that does not belong to us by right of our plan; but we must not heed them. We need not pay any attention, when invited to read notices of especial appropriation or of menace, which some persons may fancy they can perceive, and which, in point of fact, if men do not wander about merely in search of titles and names, for party, or, perhaps, money-making purposes, are seldom necessary. Sonorous titles, even names the most really solemn and important, when used in some relations, often alarming to the simple, or pleasing most to violent explosive natures, are seldom, perhaps, indispensable, and here would be wholly out of place. In the sacred book of Esther, which has ten chapters, neither the word Lord nor God occurs once, which fact may be submitted to the observation of those writers of our time who cannot compose a page on any subject, though it were only on

a plum-pudding, cannot write or speak on any topic of general literature, or even on the most trivial details of common life and manners, without dragging in, with a mere vulgar party spirit, august names, which, with others of a disparaging kind, they seem desirous of using as projectiles, to annoy or overwhelm those who are either their adversaries, or persons whom they seem bent on regarding as such, or on rendering and keeping such.

Proceeding, then, to observe in what direction common ways of thinking, with regard to this subject, would conduct us, we may remark, in the first place, that, while admitting the want of something beyond what is human, they are just in seeking a religion which shocks no principle or sentiment of our nature, which is in harmony with it, which agrees with the common universal instincts of humanity; a religion which, when misrepresented and attacked, by persons who confound it with abuses or ideal creations that are generally detestable, can claim, and prove by chapter and verse, as its own, the very sentiments that are thought to be marshalled against it, while it can smile securely, and even, content with a simple protest to indicate their mistake, applaud its own assailants, and love them the more for hating with it what they hate, and for admiring with it what they admire. For example, as this wise statement was, perhaps, rather hard to follow, if you were to say, "I hate superstition," though, by the way, you are always afraid of going under a ladder, but let that pass;—“I hate slavery; I hate priestcraft; I hate that type of episcopacy which shows it proud, subtle, and implacable; I hate intolerance, however dressed up," the common thought of human nature would reply, "Well, let us have a religion that cordially hates with you, and endeavours to suppress all that these words really designate." I think we should both be for echoing that conclusion.

Moreover, common thoughts seem excellent, in desiring a religion that would not sadden life by needlessly meddling or interfering with things that are compatible with the love of God and man, that could demand, in the ancient words ascribed to the Deity himself, "Popule meus; quid feci tibi, aut quid molestus fui? Responde mihi. Quid feci tibi? aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi.”

In the second place, advancing beyond what is negative, we may observe that common thoughts of this order are excellent because, while rejecting superstitious anthropomorphous ideas of the Deity, that is, ideas which ascribe to God the form and passions of a man, they will suggest positive, as opposed to a mere abstract, idea of the Supreme Being, a popular, and not what is sometimes called a philosophical notion of our Creator. Indeed, theologians themselves recognize the necessity of having common thoughts on this subject, and one of the most learned of their number uses these words, " Theology needs two things, without which it cannot exist, namely, ancient and common notions of God,—et antiquæ de Deo sententiæ et communes *." Philosophers themselves, accordingly, recognize the worth of these common thoughts "de Deo." "The doctrine of a perfect God," says a great German author, "in whose nature nothing arbitrary or changeable can have a place, in whose highest being we all live, and in this life may, and ought at all times to be blessed—this doctrine, which ignorant men think they have sufficiently demolished, when they have proclaimed it to be mysticism, is by no means mysticism, for it has an immediate reference to human action. It can only become mysticism when it is associated with the pretext that the insight into this truth proceeds from a certain inward and mysterious light which is not accessible to all men, but only bestowed upon a few favourites chosen from among the rest, in which pretext the mysticism consists, for it betrays a presumptuous contemplation of personal merit, and a pride in mere sensuous individuality." "The philosophic mysticism," says a French philosopher, whose words we must hear, though perhaps less suited to our little audience, "rests on a radically false notion of the absolute Being. By dint of wishing to free God from all the conditions of finite existence like our own, one takes from Him at last the conditions of existence itself; we are so afraid that the Infinite should have any thing in common with the finite and ourselves, that we do not dare to recognize that the being is common to both only with the difference of degree, and that whatever is not must be nothing. The absolute Being possesses absolute unity as He does intelligence;

Dom. Pitra, Spicileg. Solesm. iii. 77.`