cause," that we "must be zealously affected," which implies this further truth, that where the cause is not good, the mischief is proportioned to the zeal. But lest we should carry our limitations of the quality to any restriction of the seasons for exercising it, he takes care to animate us to its perpetual exercise, by adding that we must be always so affected.

If the injustice, the intolerance and persecution, with which a misguided zeal has so often afflicted the Church of Christ, in its more early periods, be lamented as a deplorable. evil, yet the over-ruling wisdom of Providence educing good from evil, made the very calamities which false zeal occasioned, the instruments of producing that true and lively zeal to which we owe the glorious band of Martyrs and Confessors, those brightest ornaments of the best periods of the Church. This effect, though a clear vindication of that divine goodness which suffers evil, is no apology for him who perpetrates it.

It is curious to observe the contrary operations of true and false zeal, which though apparently only different modifications of tho same quality, are, when brought into contact, repugnant, and even destructive to each other. There is no attribute of the human mind where the different effects of the same principle have

such a total opposition: for is it not obvious that the same principle under another direction, which actuates the tyrant in dragging the Martyr to the stake, enables the Martyr to embrace it?

As a striking proof that the necessity for caution is not imaginary, it has been observed that the Holy Scriptures record more instances of a bad zeal than of a good one. This furnishes the most authoritative argument for regulating this impetuous principle, and for governing it by all those restrictions which a feeling so calculated for good and so capable of evil demands.

It was zeal, but of a blind and furious character, which produced the Massacre on the day of St. Bartholomew-a day to which the mournful strains of Job have been so well applied." Let that day perish. Let it not be joined to the days of the year. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it."—It was a zeal the most bloody, combined with a perfidy the most detestable, which inflamed the execrable Florentine*, when, having on this occasion invited so many illustrious protestants to Paris under the alluring mask of a public festivity, she contrived to involve her guest, the pious queen of Navarre, and the venerable

* Catherine de Medici

Coligni in the general mass of undistinguished destruction. The royal and pontifical assassins, not satisfied with the sin, converted it into a triumph. Medals were struck in honour of a deed which has no parallel even in the Annals of Pagan persecution.

Even glory did not content the pernicious plotters of this direful Tragedy. Devotion was

called in to be

The crown and consummation of their crime.

The blackest hypocrisy was made use of to sanctify the foulest murder. The iniquity could not be complete without solemnly thanking God for its success. The Pope and Cardinals proceeded to St. Mark's Church where they praised the Almighty for so great a blessing conferred on the See of Rome, and the Christian world. A solemn Jubilee completed the preposterous mummery.This zeal of devotion was as much worse than even the zeal of murder, as thanking God for enabling us to commit a sin is worse than the commission itself. A wicked piety is still more disgusting than a wicked act. God is less offended by the sin itself than by the thank-offering of its perpetrators. It looks like a black attempt to involve the Creator in the crime.*

* See Thuanus for a most affecting and exact account of this direful massacre.'

It was this exterminating zeal which made the fourteenth Louis, bad in the profligacy of his youth, worse in thes uperstition of his age, revoke the tolerating Edict which might have drawn down a blessing on his kingdom.--One species of crime was called on, in his days of blind devotion, to expiate another committed in his days of mad ambition. But the expiation was even more intolerable than the of fence. The havoc made by the sword of civil persecution was a miserable atonement for the blood which unjust aggression had shed in foreign wars.

It was this impious and cruel zeal which inspired the Monk Dominic in erecting the most infernal Tribunal which ever inventive bigotry projected to dishonour the Christian name, and with which pertinacious barbarity has continued for above Six Centuries, to afflict the human race.

For a complete contrast to this pernicious zeal we need not, blessed be God, travel back into remote history, nor abroad into distant realms. This happy land of civil and religious liberty can furnish a countless catalogue of instances of a pure, a wise, and a well directed zeal. Not to swell the list, we will only mention that it has in our own Age, produced the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge,

the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.-Three as noble, and which will, we trust, be as lasting monuments as ever national virtue erected to true piety. These are Institutions which bear the genuine stamp of Christianity, not originating in party, founded in disinterestedness, and comprehending the best interests of almost the whole habitable globe" without partiality and without hypocrisy."

Why we hear so much in praise of zeal from a certain class of religious characters, is partly owing to their having taken up a notion that its required exertions relate to the care of other people's salvation rather than their own; and indeed the casual prying into a neighbour's house, though much more entertaining, is not near so troublesome as the constant inspection of one's

own.

It is observable that the outcry against zeal among the irreligious is raised on nearly the same ground, as the clamour in its favour by these professors of religion. The former suspect that the zeal of the religionist evaporates in censuring their impiety, and in eagerness for their conversion, instead of being directed to themselves. This supposed anxiety they resent, and give a practical proof of their resentment by resolving not to profit by it.