It would be difficult to find any one, in the long list of those who have interpreted Christianity, who has been more insistent than was John Smith that religion is the normal function of the soul and the surest evidence of its health and sanity. But religion of this normal and spiritual type must be sharply differentiated both from superstition and from legalistic religion. The mark of superstition in his mind is the apprehension of God as capricious, a hard Master, and of such a character that his {309} favour can be gained only by servile flattery or bribery or by spells of magic. Superstition is "a brat of darkness" born in a heart of fear and consternation. It produces invariably "a forced and jejune devotion"; it makes "forms of worship which are grievous and burdensome" to the life; it chills or destroys all free and joyous converse with God; it kills out love and inward peace, and instead of inspiring, heightening, and purifying man's soul, it bends all its energies in the vain attempt to alter the capricious attitude of the superior Being who scares and terrifies men. It is, however, a very subtle spirit and one hard to eradicate. It invades our religion even when we are least aware of it: "it enters into our chambers, creeps into our clothes, twines about our secret devotions, and actuates our forms of belief and orthodox opinions."[17] Legalistic religion, or the "covenant of works," is much of a piece with superstition. It, again, is always a burden to be borne. Its mark is "drudgery and servility." It is a "lean and lifeless form of external performances." Its "law" is always something outside the soul itself. It is a way of acquiring "merit," of getting reckoned among "heaven's darlings," but it is not a way of life or expansion or power or joy.[18]