One alternative presents itself for the solution of the pressing difficulty. The religion of these delinquent professors is sincere in its kind, and perhaps fervent; but not less fictitious than sincere. Or rather the religion they profess is not Christianity, but an image of it. Whatever there is in the Gospel that may stimulate emotion without breaking up the conscience, has been admitted and felt; but the heart has not been made "alive towards God." Repentance has had no force, the desire of pardon no intensity. Certain vices may be shunned and reprobated, and others as freely indulged; for nothing is really inconsistent with the dreams of religious delusion—except only the waking energy of true virtue. And thus it was with many in the ancient church; the stupendous objects of the unseen world had kindled the imagination; and in harmony with this state of mind, a supernatural heroism and an unnatural style of virtue were admired and practised, because they fed the flames of a fictitious happiness, which compensated for the renunciation of the pleasures of sense. In this spirit martyrdom was courted, and deserts were peopled, until they ceased to be solitudes; and in this spirit also miracles were affirmed, or fabricated, not perhaps so often by knaves as by visionaries. Tho subject of the suspicious pretensions to miraculous power advanced by many of the ancient Christian writers should not be dismissed without remarking, that it is one thing to compose a gaudy narrative (de virtutibus) of the wonder-working powers of a saint gone to his rest in the preceding century, and another to be the actor in scenes of religious juggling. If this distinction be duly considered, a very large mass of perplexing matter will at once be discharged from the page of ecclesiastical history, and that without doing the smallest violence either to charity, or to the laws of evidence. Some foolish presbyter, or busy monk, gifted with a talent of description, has collected the church tales current in his time, concerning a renowned father. The turgid biography, applauded in the monastery where it was produced, slipped away silently to the faithful of distant establishments, and without having ever undergone that ordeal of real and local publicity which authenticates common history, was suffused through Christendom, as it were, beneath the surface of notoriety, and so has come down to modern times to load the memory of some good man with unmerited disgrace. * * * * * V. The practice of mystifying the Scriptures must be named as an especial characteristic of monkish religion.