are we to improve the people, for our own security even, if we neither ourselves nor them, nor human nature generally-if we understand neither our instruments, nor our material, nor our model? We must lose no time in this matter, if we would remove the already too apparent evils which have sprung from past neglect. Our institutions, to judge from signs which can hardly be mistaken, are even now in danger. Opinions, the wildest and most extravagant in their conception, and the most dangerous in their results, yet find firm and numerous supporters. No experiment is too rash, no change too violent, to have its advocates." Whichever way we look, whether to our moral, or political, or religious controversies, we see still the same scene. Every inch of ground contested, not to say removed from us, no common principle admitted, no common object aimed at-we have surely little cause enough for exulting in the certainty of our physical knowledge, in view of the all-pervading insecurity of our moral systems. A better state of things must be produced. It is not at our option to withhold assistance from the effort, as from some idle fancy of a dreamer's benevolence. The most benevolent course is in this case the most selfish, the only one, indeed, which can benefit ourselves. In order to the individual's happiness, others must be happy; and the lowest as strongly as the highest motives urge on us the necessity of exertion for this object. We would have ourselves and our neighbors enjoying health, rather than trying to remove disease; we would see all acting in their several relations well and wisely, for the good of all, not constantly, by ignorance or rashness, prejudicing the common interest. To effect this, we must at once apply the only remedy for our present evils; we must acquire for ourselves, and induce others to acquire a knowledge of themselves-of human nature.

(To be continued.)

ARTICLE V..

ON THE ABUSE OR PERVERSION OF CERTAIN FACULTIES IN RELIGION.

That man is naturally endowed with a moral and religious nature, is a principle, we believe, generally admitted. Now phrenology is the only system of mental philosophy, which makes us acquainted with the precise character and number of the faculties of the mind which belong to this part of man's nature. Of these the three leading faculties are Conscientiousness, Benevolence, and Veneration, whose dictates, when

properly enlightened, prompt their possessor "to do justly," to love "to mercy," and "walk humbly before God." These faculties are perfectly disinterested in their nature, and have reference solely to the relations which man sustains to his fellow beings, and to his Creator.

The laws of mind, as developed by phrenology, furnish the most satisfactory and conclusive evidence, (aside from the light of Revelation) of this design in the Creator, viz. that man's moral nature or sentiments should have a controlling influence over all his other faculties, and invariably take the lead in the formation of his character. It may, moreover, be shown, by means of the same principles, that the moral sentiments afford the only solid and permanent foundation for true Religion. For if it is based chiefly on man's animal or selfish nature, it can never make his character what God designed it should be, or what his own nature requires, in order to secure the greatest amount of happiness even in this life. But it is a lamentable fact, however, that the religion of the present day is based altogether too much on the animal feelings and selfish sentiments of man-that it calls into excessive, and improper exercise, certain faculties which mar the beauty, consistency and perfection of christian character. This is the grand secret that occasions so much waywardness, inconsistency and imperfection in the outward conduct of the professed disciples of Christ. Such evils, we admit, are unavoidably necessary to some extent, in the present depraved state of human nature, but they would not continue to be long encouraged and increased, as they actually are, if theologians, divines, and religious people generally only understood the true nature of man. The members now of nearly all religious denominations, whether they wish to exert an influence over each other or on the world, resort altogether too much to motives which appeal exclusively to Love of Approbation, Self-esteem, Cautiousness, and Destructiveness, and do not address themselves sufficiently to those purer and more disinterested faculties, Conscientiousness, Veneration, and Benevolence. To such an extent has this been carried that the religion of the present day is in a a great measure based on man's selfish nature, and its exhibitions as seen in the conduct and lives of its professors, are not unfrequently marked by the excessive and improper exercise of Self-esteem, Love of Approbation, Cautiousness, Destructiveness, and Combativeness. In order to show the unhappy effects of such a perversion of the mental faculties, we are induced to copy part of an article which appeared in the fiftysecond No. of the Edinburgh Phrenological Journal. After making some omissions and corrections to adapt the matter to this country, as well as to our own pages, the article reads as follows:

The intemperance which afflicts too many professing Christians, and is particularly remarkable in some ministers of the Gospel of Peace, is perplexing to those who do not see human affairs through the medium of the true philosophy of the human mind. The phrenologist can take his station on the elevation of his science, and, looking down on the turmoil, can see the spring of every movement which agitates the passiondriven crowd below. Several fundamental truths come to his aid. He knows that the cerebral organization of each individual, acted on by his circumstances, determines the direction of his opinions and feelings. The intellectual powers in two given individuals being taken to be the same, one of them, in whom the moral feelings of Benevolence, Conscientiousness, and Veneration preponderate, will be gentle, kind, candid, respectful and religious; while the other, in whom the balance inclines considerably to the animal feelings of Self-esteem, whose abuse is pride, insolence, and love of power-Acquisitiveness, whose abuse is engrossing desire of wealth-Combativeness and Destructiveness, in their abuse contention, violence and revengefulness, feelings especially excitable by resistance to the desires of Self-esteem and Acquisitiveness-such an individual, in all he does, will, especially when opposed, be selfish, unfair, insolent, tyrannical, unmerciful, violent, and revengeful. The individual first described is essentially moral in his character; the other, from the preponderance of the lower feelings, and their state of abuse, is essentially immoral. It may here be remarked, that the breadth of immorality is greatly narrowed in its common acceptation. It has been confined, and especially by religious professors, almost entirely to sins against chastity, temperance, and common honesty; while selfishness, insolence, avarice, envy, detraction, revenge, and violence, may all in their turn, or all together, be manifested by an individual, who nevertheless would be actually astonished and enraged if any one dared to call in question his right to the repute of a perfectly moral character. While. his pretensions are disowned by sound ethics, founded upon the relative gradations of worthiness in the human faculties, they are equally opposed to the most obvious principles of Christianity; and there is perhaps nothing in which the imperfect teaching and defective practice of that divine system is more glaring than the error just alluded to. The brand of immorality is rightly placed, no doubt, on the abandoned sensualist; but reason and scripture alike extend its remark to the uncharitable, the censorious, the proud, the tyrannical, the uncandid in controversy, the violent, and the intemperate.

The phrenologist farther sees that Christianity is addressed to the higher or moral sentiments of man; that it consists in their practical

exercise; and that it can only be extended to others by the channel of the intellect and these sentiments. On the other hand, all attempts to force its extension, in other words, to dispense with intellectual and moral means, and to impart it dogmatically in one peculiar form, by the sanction of commands and threats, pains and penalties, is to convey it through a channel at variance with its nature, and to address it to lower feelings, which, from their very nature, will reject it. Hence all such attempts have failed, and will always fail, to produce genuine christianity. They are essentially persecution, which necessarily rouses resistance, and thus gives strength and vigor to opposite opinions, if they are already entertained. This is the rationale, deduced from the nature and action of the human faculties, of the fact that persecution always confirms what are called heresies.

It follows that he is the more fit, and will be the more successful, teacher of christianty, (intellect, as conditioned, being equal) who, from possessing a large endowment of the moral faculties, readily receives and responds to its precepts and truths, and uses the gentle but powerful influence of the same feelings in teaching it to his brethren of mankind. While he in whom animalism predominates, is utterly unfitted for the sacred office of a religious teacher; and when character is more studied in relation to pursuits in life than it has ever yet been, it will be held to be as absurd in such an one to assume the holy office of the ministry, as in a deaf man to teach music, or a blind man painting. From the manner in which the salaried offices of society are now filled, not because the individual suits them, but because they, from their gain, suit the individual, many unfit persons do intrude themselves into holy orders; and, as these per se do not change the character, we find too many men presenting the most direct contrast, in their whole demeaner, to that spirit which ought to distinguish, by excellence, the servants of the meek and lowly founder of christianity. This quartering for life, as it may be called, of men of war, not of peace, upon a country, this bounty on unfitness, is an evil in permanently endowed clerical offices, which no candid person will dispute, it would require very decided advantages to counterbalance.

A jealous dogmatism, since the Reformation, has endeavored to chain down the faculties of man to certain views; and has denied practically what is weekly rcommended in theory from the pulpit, the right to interpret, as following the duty to search, the scriptures. This persecution is not the less real in fact, or less popish in spirit, because there is in Protestent countries no power to torture, hang, and burn, for opinions. To say nothing of a wide field yet open at law for punishing the

unavoidable conclusions of the faculties called opinions, there is an incalculable amount of persecution perpetrated by the tongue and the pen. Character is stabbed in secret by the most unchristian censoriousness and slander, and denounced, in public, yet more boldly, by loud appeals to the mass, by reproachful names, or rather the reproachful use of the names denominating distinctions of opinion-one of the basest forms of injustice-and as we have often seen with absolute disgust, by raising the mad-dog cry of "heretic," "infidel," &c., against every opponent, even in matters of opinion and church government.

It cannot be too strongly inculcated that all means of propagating christianity but those of reason and moral feeling, are not only against Nature, but against christianity itself. Away, then, with the drivelling of those whose Self-esteem and Combativeness persuade them that fighting is yet, and always will be, necessary for the propagation and defence of christianity, and that they, forsooth, are God's champions whose religion will fall unless they prop it up; that the "good fight" is to be fought against their fellow men, and not, as in its true meaning, against their own internal corruptions, against their very fighting propensities. They will ask you, Where should we have been but for the combats of the Reformers themselves? No fallacy can be more gross. The Reformers fought against tyranny, against the very abuses which they are doing their zealous but feeble endeavors to re-establish.

No purely benevolent and philanthropic individual who sincerely and ardently wishes the happiness of the race, can look on some of the present manifestations of religious conduct, without being grieved and feeling his heart pained within him. A tyrannical dogmatism, a "rampant" orthodoxy, tolerates no interpretations, no opinions, differing, even by a shade, from its own; denounces with acrimony, as infidel and heretic, all attempts, however conscientious and benevolent, intellectually to enlighten, morally to elevate, and even religiously to improve, mankind in any way differing from theirs, even in the mere phraseology of language; dooms, so far as their power extends, to a kind of social proscription, and consequent ruin, men who are spreading philosophical truth, calculated to humanize mankind, and render christianity no longer a form, but a practical living principle in beautiful accordance with Nature; whose pages glow with the purest love of their fellow men, and shine with the clearest guidance in the path of temporal, one earnest of eternal, happiness. Who, moreover, if they do touch scriptural truths, use but the right which the scriptures themselves bestow, of understanding these according to their conscientious convictions. A calmer, better educated, more moral, generation will review the sentence