laws that man has made, but the customs of fashion, that woman enforces. The wrongs of governesses-who inflict them? The selfish and heartless of their own sex. The late hours of shopkeepers-who perpetuates them? Why the business of shopping rests chiefly with women; they could remedy that evil at once, if they chose to do it. If women desire to elevate their own sex and to benefit society, it must be by having more union and sympathy with each other."

Etty for a moment looked disconcerted; but aunt Patty said: "Give woman a better—that is, a more rational education, and she will understand her duties more clearly. She will be more public spirited, have a more enlarged mind, and be better able to judge of the consequences and results of her actions."

"Ah," said Etty, recovering her momentary confusion," the wonder is not that woman should be mistaken in a few instances, and faulty in others, but that she should so often be right both in feeling and in practice. The indignation and surprise with which society views feminine delinquencies even of a minor character, is a tacit evidence, that if women are not the cleverest they are certainly the best half of the human race. And indeed, the wisest half-for what is wisdom but knowledge rightly applied? Not the amount of knowledge, but the use made of what is possessed, is the test of wisdom."

"I would not have you boast too much, or I shall call for proofs, Etty," rejoined Philip.

74

"Well! as that would lead us into an interminable argument," said Mrs. Vernon, "we will

not enter into it now. I

ready with her paper soon.

suppose Etty will be In the meanwhile we

must have on our next gathering, Philip's thoughts on Credulity."

CHAPTER V.

CREDULITY-CHAMPIONSHIP OF ERROR.

As soon as the family had assembled on the appointed evening, Philip, without preface, commenced his reading :

"If human perversity has been shown in prejudice, human ambition has equally been manifested in credulity. The strongest natural evidence we have of the deathlessness of the soul is its เ longing after immortality '—its stretching forth its aspirations to futurity-its looking beyond and afar off-its incapacity to rest content merely with the present. The imagination comes in aid of this yearning to penetrate the invisible—this deep, inwrought love of the marvellous. Fear, wonder, curiosity-all tend to stimulate this idealism. The first consciously thoughtful glance at the world around us makes us aware of the presence of sublime and awful mysteries. Wherever we turn our eyes, we are met with manifestations of power and grandeur evident indeed to our perceptions, but

baffling to our comprehension. The vast deep blue dome above, with its ever-varying drapery of clouds, and its resplendent lights; the viewless winds, sweeping over all, and sending their pealing many-voiced song through all; the green mantle of the smiling earth, the tender beauty of the flowers that enamel it, the sweetness of their breath, the trembling delicacy of their form, the superb splendour of their innumerable tints; the lofty mountains, with their mist-crowned summits and their shadowy hollows; the stately trees that wave responsive to the sounds of earth and the melodies of air; the ocean, with its booming waves, its sheeny glitter, its ceaseless tides, its awful storms; these, and all the myriad forms of life that inhabit them and blend with their varied beauty, appeal to man with a voice of mysterious and solemn power, and thrill him with emotions as varied as themselves. The influence of the external world on the spiritual part of our nature is felt even from childhood; but it is ever a wonder and mystery even to the most reflecting mind, the most subtle intellect.

"No tone of the diversified voice of nature ever told man distinctly any of the truths his soul panted to know. No sound shaped itself into utterances that could calm his perturbed and ceaseless inquiry-'What, and whence am I,-whither do I go? What are these sights and sounds that environ me?' Earth, with her thousand voices to suggest inquiry, had not one definitely and satisfactorily to answer him. He was awed by her

grandeur, fascinated by her beauty, overpowered by her opulence, bewildered by her diversity; but clearly and intelligently informed of the great First Cause of all that he saw without and felt within him, he was not. All he knew was that he was surrounded by mysteries-he himself being the greatest.

"To worship what was so fair seemed a necessity of man's loving heart; to dread what was so powerful, an involuntary tribute of his reverential spirit. The strong passions and corrupt tendencies of his own nature generated selfishness and fear. Hence, the earliest forms of idolatry always deified the two principles of good and evil, and had special reference to propitiating each.

"It might be thought, that as our race increased in the knowledge that observation and experience cannot fail to accumulate, and began, however clumsily, to study, arrange, and subdue much of the external world, the marvel would become weaker, and the tendency to credulity would decrease. This was not the case. Egypt, with her geometrical, mechanical, and agricultural knowledge, groped in the gross darkness of the most abject and slavish superstition. A few of her learned and initiated might have seen a simple truth in the symbols that were set up for worship. The onion to them might have been sacred, for the geometrical circles and sections it contained; and the beetle, for the number of its legs agreeing with their divisions of time; but the symbol itself, and not the fact it symbolized,

became, as in all idolatry, the grovelling, impersonated idea of Deity-the degrading stimulant of a soulless worship. The tribes of the East-Persians, Arabians, Assyrians-seemed to have had an equally false, but a less humiliating worship. Fire, the life-giving, death-dealing, all-pervading principle of nature, was the deity of some; the sun, moon, and stars, in their grand and silent majesty, received the adoration of others. The desire to control future events-the belief that some gifted individuals, special favourites of the invisible powers, could do this, became an important part of every false religion. This desire formed the two mutually supporting classes of impostors and dupes.

"With the advancing intelligence of the heathen world, credulity does not seem to have ever declined; it changed its forms indeed, but it rather gathered than lost power. Greece and Rome incorporated a sort of hero worship, and systematized and humanly embodied in their vast and gorgeous mythology all that Egypt and the region of the East had taught in somewhat grosser symbols. Thirty thousand deities incumbered their imagination and perplexed their wild and contradictory worship. Poets contrived to thread the mazes of their bewildering and sensuous religion, and to give some clue of it to others. A dim theory of morals appeared in the confusion, giving employment to the speculative ingenuity or subtle tact of philosophers, who wove systems and founded schools; and while professing to teach what was the