faith—using the word in its unsophisticated meaning—throughout the Christian community would dispel, in a moment, a thousand dismal and profitless refinements, and impart to the feelings of Christians that unvarying solidity which naturally belongs to the perception of facts so immensely important as those revealed in the Scriptures. In witnessing, first, the entreaties, and supplications, and tears of a convicted, condemned, and repentant malefactor, prostrate at the feet of his sovereign, and then the exuberance of his joy and gratitude in receiving pardon and life, no one would so absurdly misuse language as to call the intensity and fervor of the criminal's feelings enthusiastical: for, however strong, or even ungovernable those emotions may be, they are perfectly congruous with the occasion: they spring from no illusion; but are fully justified by the momentous turn that has taken place in his affairs: in the past hour he contemplated nothing but the horrors of a violent, an ignominious, and a deserved death; but now life, with its delights, is before him. It is true that all men in the same circumstances would not undergo the same intensity of emotion: but all, unless obdurate in wickedness, must experience feelings of the same quality. And thus, so long are the real circumstances under which every human being stands in the court of the Supreme Judge are clearly understood, and duly felt, enthusiasm finds no place; all is real; nothing illusory. But when once these unutterably important facts are forgotten or obscured, then, by necessity every enhancement of religious feeling is a step on the ascent of enthusiasm; and it becomes a matter of very little practical consequence, whether the deluded pietist be the worshipper of some system of abstract rationalism or of tawdry images and rotten relics; though the latter error of the two is perhaps preferable, inasmuch as a warm-hearted fervor is always better than frozen pride. * * * * *