Of religion, in its widest sense, (the sense in which the traveller must recognize it,) there are three kinds; not in all cases minutely distinguishable, but bearing different general impress; viz. the Licentious, the Ascetic, and the Moderate. These kinds are not divided from each other by the boundaries of sects. We cannot say that pagan religions come under one head, and Mahomedanism under another, and Christianity under a third. The difference lies not in creeds, but in spirit. Many pagans have been as moderate as any Christians; many Christians as licentious as any pagans; many Mahomedans as licentious, and many as ascetic, as any pagans or Christians. The truer distinction seems to be that the licentious religions of the world worship unspiritualized nature,--material objects and their movements, and the primitive passions of man: that the ascetic despises nature, and worships its artificial restraints: and that the moderate worships spiritualized nature,--God in his works, both in the material universe and in the disciplined human mind, with its regulated affections. The Licentious religion is always a ritual one. Its gods are natural phenomena and human passions personified; and, when once the power of doing good or harm is attributed to them, the idea of propitiation enters, and a ritual worship begins. Earthquakes, inundations, the chase, love, revenge,--all these agents of evil and good are to be propitiated, and sacrifices and prayers are to be offered to them; in these rites alone religious acts are supposed to be performed. This, however modified, is a low state of religious sentiment. It may show itself among the Hindoos dipping in the Ganges, or among Christians who accept absolution in its grossest sense. In either case its tendency is to render the worshipper satisfied with a low moral state, and to perpetuate his taste for selfish indulgence.