229. Now in this broad definition of Pietas, as reverence to sentimental law, you will find I am supported by all classical authority and use of this word. For the particular meaning of which I am next about to use the word Religion, there is no such general authority, nor can there be, for any limited or accurate meaning of it. The best authors use the word in various senses; and you must interpret each writer by his own context. I have myself continually used the term vaguely. I shall endeavour, henceforward, to use it under limitations which, willing always to accept, I shall only transgress by carelessness, or compliance with some particular use of the word by others. The power in the word, then, which I wish you now to notice, is in its employment with respect to doctrinal divisions. You do not say that one man is of one piety, and another of another; but you do, that one man is of one religion, and another of another. 230. The religion of any man is thus properly to be interpreted, as the feeling which binds him, irrationally, to the fulfilment of duties, or acceptance of beliefs, peculiar to a certain company of which he forms a member, as distinct from the rest of the world. 'Which binds him _irrationally_,' I say;--by a feeling, at all events, apart from reason, and often superior to it; such as that which brings back the bee to its hive, and the bird to her nest. A man's religion is the form of mental rest, or dwelling-place, which, partly, his fathers have gained or built for him, and partly, by due reverence to former custom, he has built for himself; consisting of whatever imperfect knowledge may have been granted, up to that time, in the land of his birth, of the Divine character, presence, and dealings; modified by the circumstances of surrounding life. It may be, that sudden accession of new knowledge may compel him to cast his former idols to the moles and to the bats. But it must be some very miraculous interposition indeed which can justify him in quitting the religion of his forefathers; and, assuredly, it must be an unwise interposition which provokes him to insult it. 231. On the other hand, the value of religious ceremonial, and the virtue of religious truth, consist in the meek fulfilment of the one as the fond habit of a family; and the meek acceptance of the other, as the narrow knowledge of a child. And both are destroyed at once, and the ceremonial or doctrinal prejudice becomes only an occasion of sin, if they make us either wise in our own conceit, or violent in our methods of proselytism. Of those who will compass sea and land to make one proselyte, it is too generally true that they are themselves the children of hell, and make their proselytes twofold more so.