“When I gleaned this fact from biography, I paused, and said, ‘Then must there be something excellent in Wisdom, if it can even in its most imperfect disciples be thus beneficial to morality.’ Pursuing this sentiment, I redoubled my researches, and, behold, the object of my quest was won! I had before sought a satisfactory answer to the question, ‘What is Virtue?’ from men of a thousand tenets, and my heart had rejected all I had received. ‘Virtue,’ said some, and my soul bowed reverently to the dictate, ‘Virtue is Religion.’ I heard and humbled myself before the Divine Book. Let me trust that I did not humble myself in vain! But the dictate satisfied less than it awed; for either it limited Virtue to the mere belief, or by extending it to the practice, of Religion, it extended also the inquiry to the method in which the practice should be applied. But with the first interpretation of the dictate who could rest contented?--for while, in the perfect enforcement of the tenets of our faith, all virtue may be found, so in the passive and the mere belief in its divinity, we find only an engine as applicable to evil as to good: the torch which should illumine the altar has also lighted the stake, and the zeal of the persecutor has been no less sincere than the heroism of the martyr. Rejecting, therefore, this interpretation, I accepted the other: I felt in my heart, and I rejoiced as I felt it, that in the practice of Religion the body of all virtue could be found. But, in that conviction, had I at once an answer to my inquiries? Could the mere desire of good be sufficient to attain it; and was the attempt at virtue synonymous with success? On the contrary, have not those most desirous of obeying the precepts of God often sinned the most against their spirit, and has not zeal been frequently the most ardent when crime was the most rife? [There can be no doubt that they who exterminated the Albigenses, established the Inquisition, lighted the fires at Smithfield, were actuated, not by a desire to do evil, but (monstrous as it may seem) to do good; not to counteract, but to enforce what they believed the wishes of the Almighty; so that a good intention, without the enlightenment to direct it to a fitting object, may be as pernicious to human happiness as one the most fiendish. We are told of a whole people who used to murder their guests, not from ferocity or interest, but from the pure and praiseworthy motive of obtaining the good qualities, which they believed, by the murder of the deceased, devolved upon them!] But what, if neither sincerity nor zeal was sufficient to constitute goodness; what if in the breasts of the best-intentioned crime had been fostered the more dangerously because the more disguised,--what ensued? That the religion which they professed, they believed, they adored, they had also misunderstood; and that the precepts to be drawn from the Holy Book they had darkened by