p."

"Ah! my friend," cried Fellowes, "do not thus blaspheme the most holy
feelings of humanity, however misapplied!"

"I do not conceive that I do, in declaring abhorrence and contempt of
such perversions of 'sentiment,' however 'holy' you may call them.
Hideous as they are, however, they are less hideous than the
half-length apologies for them on the part of cultivated and civilized
human beings, like our 'spiritual' infidels. Your tenderness is
ludicrously misplaced. I wonder whether the same apology would extend
to those exercises of simple-minded 'faith' in which it is said that
the Spanish and Portuguese pirates sometimes indulged, when they
implored the benediction of their saints on their predatory
expeditions! And yet I see not how it could be avoided; for the
exorbitancies of these pirates were not more hateful to humanity than
are the rites practices, and the duties enjoined, by many forms of
religion. What delightful, ingenuous 'faith' and genuine 'simplicity'
of mind did these pirates manifest!"

"How can you talk so, when we make it a mark of a false revelation,
that it contradicts any intuition of our moral nature?"

"Then cease to talk of your 'absolute religion,' as capable in any
way of consecrating the hateful forms of false and cruel superstition for
which you and Mr. Parker condescend to be the apologists. The
fanaticism of such pious and devout beasts as those saint-loving
pirates is not a more flagrant violation of the principle of morality,
than the acts which flow directly as the immediate and natural
expression of the infinitely varied but all-polluting forms of
idolatry with which you are pleased to identify your 'absolute
religion,' and in all of which you suppose an acceptable 'faith' to
be very possible. You see how Mr. Parker extends the apology to
the foulest sets of his Tartar and Calmuck scoundrels; acts
called murders in the codes of Christendom and civilization, but
varnished over by the beautiful 'faith' which somehow still lurks
under the most frightful practices of a simple-minded barbarian. If
this faith will shelter the abominations of a gross idolatry, I see
not what else it may not sanctify.--But, in fact, neither in the
case of idolaters, nor any other religionists, is it true that
'faith' is independent of 'belief'; in the case of your Calmuck, for
example, the 'belief' is vile, and therefore the 'faith' vile too;
faith practical enough, certainly, but one that as certai