garments that could be divided, into four parts, and casting lots for the one which could not be cut without spoiling it, because it was without seam, and worked, woven, or knit "from the top throughout," is just the very thing the soldiers were likely to do, is an incident so natural and truthful, that it could not be invented, and is far more valuable from this reality on the face of it, in its plain obvious sense, than all the submeanings which catholics or protestants can fancy under it. The sub-meaning, or pun, discovered by catholics under the name Peter (a rock), upon which the church of Rome, and the power of Saint Peter and his successors, is founded, should make the protestant preacher cautious of searching for more symbolical meanings and allusions than the inspired writers themselves have pointed out. He who rings the symbolical bells in his pulpit according to his own judgment or fancy, should remember what the bells in his steeple are telling him "As the fool thinks, so the bell chinks." -- The veneration for relics springs from a nobler source than ignorance or superstition. Is it ignorance or superstition that makes the stern presbyterian regard with veneration the gown, the pulpit, the Bible of John Knox; the window at the head of the Canongate from which he preached; the original manuscript of the solemn league and covenant; or that noblest of all the documents which any Christian church can produce, the Protest of the 376 ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, and their signatures to their instant resignation, for conscience sake, of all the worldly interests that men hold dear,- of their houses, homes, and comforts? Is it superstition that makes this document of the sincerity of those 376 remarkable men circulate in fac-simile- makes it to be venerated and preserved by all intelligent men in Scotland, however widely they may differ from the principle or doctrine of the Free Church, as the most interesting relic of our times? Is it ignorance that makes the most enlightened men of the age prize a relic of Sir Walter Scott, or Robert Burns, makes them search with avidity for a genuine portrait, an autograph, or relic of any kind, of Shakspeare, Milton, or Newton? Is this ignorance, superstition, folly? If it were within the limits of possibility, and beyond all doubt on historical or physical grounds, that a genuine portrait of our Saviour did exist, or that his raiment, or the nails by which he was attached to the cross, were preserved unconsumed by moth, rust, damp, and other natural agencies of decay, during eighteen hundred and forty-five years,—would it be ignorance, folly, and gross superstition to regard these relics with the same interest and veneration that the most enlightened men pay to similar relics of Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, Burns, or Scott? What is the intellectual value of a genuine relic, portrait, image, or other memorial of past events or persons? It must be a value founded in the natural constitution of the human mind, for it has been given to relics in all ages and in all stages of civilisation. The Israelites (Exodus xiii. 19.) took the bones that is, the relics of Joseph with them, on their flight out of Egypt. The most enlightened men, in the most civilised ages, render a similar respect to relics; and even the free-thinker, the infidel, the atheist, pays this homage to this natural feeling or principle in the human mind, and goes to Ferney for a hair from the periwig of Voltaire, or to America for the bones of Tom Paine. On what is this value founded? The human mind has a natural and irresistible tendency in it towards truth. All intellectual movement springs from this tendency. All intellectual enjoyment, all the pleasure we derive from the fine arts, for instance, may perhaps be traced up to this element in the constitution of mind, to the gratification of this tendency. To 16 VENERATION FOR RELICS IN RELIGION. make a fact, to make a vivid defined whole, to raise an intellectual fact, although it be out of fiction, out of imagined, not out of natural existences, to give a distinct form to the vague, to combine new and unknown conceptions into one whole, one fact which the mind can grasp as a reality, to individualise, in a word, is poetry, painting, statuary, music. The intellectual pleasure these arts give us is the gratification of this tendency of mind towards truth, that is to say, towards intellectual truth, towards a distinct connected representation to our minds of a whole of ideas which may or may not be naturally true. A play of Shakspeare is intellectually true, without being naturally true,— is more true than the matter of fact itself. The fact itself which poetry or painting presents to the mind, may be a false fact, a matter of fiction; yet the poet or painter individualises his fiction, makes his wildest fancies intellectual truths to the human mind by the distinct impressions of them which his genius has the power of giving. Now, the veneration or love for relics, or memorials of past events or persons, for portraits, images, autographs, books, bones, clothes, hair, holy coats, nails, &c., appears founded on this same element in the constitution of the human mind. The relic helps to realise the idea, to individualise the conception, and this individualisation is, from the tendency of mind towards intellectual truth, the highest of our mental gratifications. This appears to be the true value of relics. The great and fundamental error of the Roman Catholic church is that it connects this mental gratification, in itself a natural and high gratification of the spiritual part of man, with the Christian religion, although in reality it has no more connexion with Christianity than the bodily gratification of eating, drinking, or any other physical enjoyment. It enables, no doubt, the Roman Catholic believer to individualise his conceptions, and thereby to dwell upon them with a sustained devotion, fervour, and enthusiasm, and ecstasy, of which the Protestant believer is, from the very nature of the human mind, altogether incapable. But of what are his conceptions? Of the doctrine of our Saviour and his Apostles? No! but of his or their bodily appearance, presence, or sufferings. This is not religion. It is from this point—in itself a true and natural element in the constitution of the mind of manthat the Roman Catholic church has diverged from genuine Christianity. It has built upon this element an idolatrous worship founded on imagina C |