The excitements of enthusiasm are so much more congruous with the uncorrected impulses of human nature, than are the principles of genuine piety, that the former have usually far surpassed the latter, as motives, in the difficult and mortifying achievements of self-denial. In proportion as a system of fanaticism is remote from truth, its stimulating force is found to be great. Thus the fakirs of India have carried the feats of voluntary torture far beyond any other order of religionists. Mohammedans, generally, are more zealous, devout, and fervent than Christians. Romanists surpass Protestants in the solemnity, intensity, and scrupulosity of their devotional exercises. In conformity with this well-known principle, the monastic orders have had to boast, in all ages, of some prodigious instances of mortification, as well as of charitable heroism. And the boast might be allowed to win more praise than can be granted to it, if there were not manifest, invariably, in these exploits, a ferment of sinister feelings, quite incompatible with the simplicity and purity of Christian virtue. For example, let a comparison be drawn between a daughter who, in the deep seclusion of private life, and without a spectator to applaud her virtue, cheerfully devotes her prime of years to the service of an afflicted parent;—and the nun, who inveigles beggars daily to the convent, where she absolves them, against their will, from their filth, dresses their ulcers, and cleanses their tatters. Assuredly the part she performs is more seemingly difficult, and far more revolting than that of the pious daughter; yet it is in fact more easy; for the inflated "sister of charity"[11] is sustained and impelled by notions of heroism, and of celestial excellence, and by a present recompense of fame among her sisterhood, of all which the other does not dream, who, unless she were actuated by the substantial motives of true goodness, could never in this manner win the blessing of heaven. Self-inflicted penances, wasteful abstinences, fruitless labors, sanctimonious humiliations, and all such like spontaneities, may fairly be classed with those painful and perilous sports, in pursuing which it often happens that a greater amount of suffering is endured, and of danger incurred, than ordinarily belongs to the services and duties of real life. But these freaks of the monastery, or these toils of the field, deserve little praise, seeing that they meet their immediate reward in the gratification of a peculiar taste. In both instances the adult child pleases himself in his own way, and must be deemed to do much if he avoids trampling down the rights of his neighbor.