NS--Veneration of crucifixes and statues or
images--Their power of healing--Picture at Cadiz--_Lignum
Crucis_--Veronica--Bodies of saints--How
procured--Inscriptions--Lives of saints--Maria de
Agreda--St Francis--Scandalous representation of the
appearance of the Virgin to a saint--Fray Diego de
Cadiz--_Beata_ Clara--Her fame and downfall--The nun,
Sister Patrocinio--Her success, detection, confession, and
expulsion--She returns, and is protected by a high
personage--She is again expelled, but again returns and
founds a convent--Its disgraceful character and
suppression--Her flight towards Rome--Occurrences on the
road--Her return to Spain

CONCLUSION 201

Introduction

Variableness of outward practice of Christianity--The like as to that of
Mahometanism--Roman Catholicism most subject to that
modification--Excesses of Roman Catholicism in Spain accounted for by
Spanish history--The Goths and Moors of Africa--Their conversion to
Christianity--The aborigines of America--Traditional coincidences with
scriptural truth--National character of the religion of
Spaniards--Religion of the affections--Santa Teresa--Amatory propensities
in connection with religion--Knight-errantry--Motto of Spanish
nobility--The four primitive orders--Loyola--Religion the pretext for
wars of Spain--Three distinct features of the national character of
Spaniards, illustrated by Isabella the Catholic, Charles V., and Philip
II.

Christianity, although of divine origin, and, consequently, like all that
participates in the essence of Divinity, immutable in its doctrines and
creeds, submits itself nevertheless, in outward practice, to the
incidents common to all human institutions, and receives an impression
from the particular character of the people who observe its rites, and
subject their conduct to its precepts. Every religious idea lays hold on
the heart and understanding: consequently the state of the affections and
the intellectual bias of each nation must communicate to the worship it
professes a particular influence, which is seen, not only in the way in
which ceremonies are practised, or in the organization of the hierarchy,
or in the style and language which man uses in addressing the Deity, but
in the entire system of actions, relations, and thoughts, which
constitutes what is called worship.

Worship participates in the impulse which a nation has received at its
origin,--fr