of evil and good are to be
propitiated, and sacrifices and prayers are to be offered to them; in
these rites alone religious acts are supposed to be performed. This,
however modified, is a low state of religious sentiment. It may show
itself among the Hindoos dipping in the Ganges, or among Christians who
accept absolution in its grossest sense. In either case its tendency is
to render the worshipper satisfied with a low moral state, and to
perpetuate his taste for selfish indulgence.

The Ascetic religions are ritual also. The Pharisees of old need but be
cited to show why; and there is a set of people in the Society Islands
now who seem to be spiritually descended from the ascetic priests of
Judaism. The inhabitants of the Society Islands are excluded from many
innocent privileges and natural pleasures by the Tabu; and the Pharisees
in just the same manner laid burdens upon men's shoulders too heavy to
be borne, ordaining irksome ceremonies to be proofs of holiness, and
extravagant self-denial to be required by devotion. Spiritual licence
has always kept pace with this extravagance of self-denial. Spiritual
vices,--pride, vanity, and hypocrisy,--are as fatal to high morals under
this state of religious sentiment as sensual indulgence under the other:
and it does not matter much to the moral welfare of the people sunk in
it, whether they exist under a profession of Christianity, or of
Mahomedanism, or of paganism. The morals of those people are low who
engage themselves to serve God by a slothful life in monastic celibacy,
no less than those of the Fakirs, who let their nails grow through the
backs of their hands, or those of the wretched mothers in the islands of
the Pacific, who strangle their infants, and cast them at the feet of
their grinning idol.

The Moderate is the least of a ritual religion of the three, and drops
such rites as it has in proportion to its advance towards purity.
Religion in its purity is not a pursuit, but a temper; and its
expression is not by sacrifices, by prayers in the corners of the
streets, by fasts or public exhibitions. The highest manifestations of
this order of religion are found in Christian countries; though in
others there are individuals, and even orders of men, who understand
that the orderly enjoyment of all blessings that Providence has
bestowed, and the regulated workings of all human affections, are the
truest homage to the Maker of all. As there are Christians whose
rel