it belongs to infidelity, which, in general, is rather a false faith than any mere absence of belief. Infidelity, in short, is an erroneous belief. And such, also, is every species of superstition, and this designation of it by the name of erroneous faith, if generally adopted, would be more correct and accurate, or, at least, less liable to be misunderstood than its ordinary title. For, to adhere to the usual term, every species of infidelity is either a material deification of nature and a worship of the sensible powers of life, or it is an abstract deification of the absolute subjective Me, and the pure reason, with its endless thinking and knowing. Even when it is conceived in a purely skeptical light as an absolute _not-knowing_, still even in this case it is the understanding that is deified. Standing apart from, and thinking itself superior to, the weak prejudices of other men--in its negation feeling and fancying itself to be instinct with genius--it is regarded and set up as the highest object of existence, and thereby in a certain intellectual sense is made an idol of. Even the evil power of perverted genius--for such we may well call it when it ventures to contemn both law and right, and fancies itself to be raised high above the voice of conscience and the moral duties of docility and humblemindedness as belonging to ordinary minds--even such a perverted genius may be made the idol of a man who has once turned his back on the simple truth and on God, and has arrogantly set himself in opposition to both. We may, in short, without hesitation, advance it as an invariable principle and an unerring rule, that the man who has lost or abandoned--not to say rejected--the idea and belief in the one good and righteous God, has enshrined within his breast and cherishes some more or less dangerous idol, whether it be the subjective Me or some fearful passion, or, it may be, some firm and well-finished system of deified reason or nature.