destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies,
the enemies of the religion! O God! make their children orphans, and
defile their abodes, and cause their feet to slip, and give them and
their families, and their households, and their women, and their
children, and their relations by marriage, and their brothers, and their
friends, and their possessions, and their race, and their wealth, and
their lands, as booty to the Moslems! O Lord of all creatures!"--It
would be unjust to impute a horror of "sudden death" to all who use the
words of prayer against it which are found in the Litany of the Church
of England. Sudden death deserved to be classed among the most deadly
evils when the Litany was framed,--in the days of the viaticum; but now
it would be unjust to a multitude of worshippers who use the Litany to
suppose that they are afraid to commit themselves to the hands of their
Father without a passport from a priest; and that they are not willing
to die in the way which pleases God,--some rather preferring, probably,
a mode which will save those who are nearest and dearest to them the
anguish of suspense, or of witnessing hopeless decline. In all antique
forms of devotion there must be expressions which are inconsistent with
the philosophy and the tastes of the time; and these are to be regarded
therefore as no indications of such philosophy and taste, but as an
evidence, more or less distinct, of the condition of the clergy in
enlightenment and temper.

* * * * *

The splendid topic of human Superstitions can be only just touched upon
here. In this boundless field, strewn with all the blossoms of all
philosophy, the human observer may wander for ever. He can never have
done culling the evidence that it presents, or enjoying the promise
which it yields. All that we can now do is just to suggest that as the
superstitions of all nations are the embodiment of their idealized
convictions, the state of religious sentiment may be learned from them
almost without danger of mistake.

No society is without its superstitions, any more than it is without its
convictions and its imaginations. Even under the moderate form of
religion, there is room for superstition; and the ascetic, which glories
in having put away the superstitions of the licentious forms, has
superstitions of its own.--The followers of an ascetic religion have
more or less belief in judgments,--in retributive evils, arbitrari