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    them into an extravagant and unnatural shape . Religion , instead of being regarded as the general habit of the mind , is a paroxysm . Religion is , in fact , a man ' s Self made holy , pure , and excellent ; but amongst the Revivalists it is a divine afflatus , breathed into the mind , having nothing

    common with it , not incorporated With its friodes of thought and feeling , but existing apart by a foreign and preternatural influence , and thus a man may be at the same time very religious and yet very corrupt . From this view of ireligion it is that the initiated are said to have ' got religion . " Men are supposed to be made Christians in one moment ; grace descends ,

    not like the , calm and refreshing dew , slowly developing the growth of nature ; but like the lightning , sudden , irresistible , and blasting every thing natural . Common sense is dissipated at its approach—otherwise , how could

    men talk of " getting religion" in an hour or a moment ? An instance of this is worth mentioning . ** I sent my servant to a tailor to ask why a coat I had ordered was not brought to me , and the answer was , that the principal workman had got religion that morning , and could not finish it . " The tendency , not only of these religious excesses , but of orthodox principles and practices generally , is to represent religion as something unusual and miraculous , foreign to human nature , and to which human nature is hostile

    Religion is not brought down to those principles of common sense by which men judge of other things . It is not brought into free contact with the mind . There is a mystery and spell about it . It comes to strangers , not , as Jesus did , to its own . And never till it is disenchanted- ~ -never till it comes to dwell in the freedom of our minds and the simplicity of our affections- ^ - never till we learn to commune with it as the companion and friend of our bosoms , shall we experience its full power , and perceive its transcendant

    glory . True religion is calm and tranquil ; the religion of revivals is noisy , boisterous and turbid . The spirit is agitated , not hushed . There is no delicacy , no retirement ; every thing courts the garish eye of day . Religious anxieties , when real and genuine , naturally shrink from notice . They are buried in the heart , or borne to the altar of private devotion , or , at most , unfolded in private and intimate intercourse with a friend . But amidst

    revivals , and with the orthodox in general , publicity prevails in the most sacred emotions . People are questioned respecting their most delicate , or what ought to be their most delicate feelings , in a crowd , and it is considered a mark of pride or obduracy to decline so open a disclosure . By these extravagancies religion is very much resolved into a set of passive impressions . Every thing is designed to prepare the mind for being operated

    on . Yet if a man should be active in any thing in the world , it certainly is in procuring his own worth , his own virtue , his own piety—in a word , his own happiness . This is the very law of happiness , and It is a law never to be broken . Happiness can be got in no other way ; religion can be got in

    no other way . The semblance of piety may be attained by passive impressions ; but semblances last not long , and while they last are of no worth . If religion consists in any thing , it consists in action—in mental , moral , habitual , daily action . It is not the business of religion to shut men up to despair and inactivity ; nor to " shove them off , " as a distinguished transatlantic Revivalist lately said in a sermon , * ' to shove them off in an . open boat without sail , oar , rudder , or compass . " The business of ministers , he said , was " to get them into the boat and shove them off , and then they were left to the mercy of God . " Revivals do more than any thing else to fasten the yoke of religious timidity and subservience on the mass of the

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    ! thc Wiuehmnn . 563

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1829, page 563, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2575/page/43/