tive which rarely affects the multitude
unless it assumes a religious aspect. The religious aspect at any rate
strengthens its power for good. Yet without any such natural foundation,
religious motives alone are powerful to prevent crime. We need not be
surprised at this in the case of the multitude, when we see that even
people of education pass now and then under the influence, not indeed of
religious motives, which are founded on something which is at least
allegorically true, but of the most absurd superstition, and allow
themselves to be guided by it all their life long; as, for instance,
undertaking nothing on a Friday, refusing to sit down thirteen at a
table, obeying chance omens, and the like. How much more likely is the
multitude to be guided by such things. You can't form any adequate idea
of the narrow limits of the mind in its raw state; it is a place of
absolute darkness, especially when, as often happens, a bad, unjust and
malicious heart is at the bottom of it. People in this condition--and
they form the great bulk of humanity--must be led and controlled as well
as may be, even if it be by really superstitious motives; until such
time as they become susceptible to truer and better ones. As an instance
of the direct working of religion, may be cited the fact, common enough,
in Italy especially, of a thief restoring stolen goods, through the
influence of his confessor, who says he won't absolve him if he doesn't.
Think again of the case of an oath, where religion shows a most decided
influence; whether it be that a man places himself expressly in the
position of a purely _moral being_, and as such looks upon himself as
solemnly appealed to, as seems to be the case in France, where the
formula is simply _je le jure_, and also among the Quakers, whose solemn
_yea_ or _nay_ is regarded as a substitute for the oath; or whether it
be that a man really believes he is pronouncing something which may
affect his eternal happiness,--a belief which is presumably only the
investiture of the former feeling. At any rate, religious considerations
are a means of awakening and calling out a man's moral nature. How often
it happens that a man agrees to take a false oath, and then, when it
comes to the point, suddenly refuses, and truth and right win the day.

_Philalethes_. Oftener still false oaths are really taken, and truth and
right trampled under foot, though all witnesses of the oath know it
well! Still you are quite r