Beauty, my Life! instead of healing my pain, you take pleasure in it. Come, let me embrace you, and die in your sacred arms.' And again she writes: "Then, as I was spent with fatigue, I was forced to say, 'My divine Love, since you wish me to live, I pray you let me rest a little, that I may the better serve you;' and I promised Him that afterwards I would suffer myself to consume in His chaste and divine embraces."1 Some of her pupils also had mystical marriages with Christ; and the impassioned rhapsodies of one of them being overheard, she nearly lost her character, as it was thought that she was apostrophizing an earthly lover. A hagiographer reports that in her hallucinations, kindled by senses imperfectly mortified, S. Christina, a virgin and abbess, believed herself to have received favours which left her no longer a virgin; and he gravely ends his memoir: "At post plures annos in monastica observantia sanctissime, prudentissimeque transactos, cœlesti sponso copulata est."2

The intense application of the attention on a particular mental image will produce hallucinations and trance, and cataleptic fits, and the reason is as slowly and surely undermined as is the constitution. When the Protestant convulsionists and visionaries of the Cevennes found refuge in England, their ecstasies disappeared, and with tears they lamented the fact, thinking that God had deserted them. The change of air and scenery had distracted their attention, and ceasing to be visionary rebels, they became rational citizens, before the last glimmer of common sense had expired.

The mystic, confusing imaginations with sensations, objects his ideas, and supposes he is leaving himself, when he 1 Casgrain: Vie de Marie de l'Incarnation.

2 Dumoustier: Sacrum Gynæceum, iv. Decemb. p. 484.

is, in fact, self-concentrated. Madame Guyon, in her ardent devotion and straining towards an ineffable union with the Deity, was thus wholly self-deceived. She wrote:

"I love the Lord-but with no love of mine,

For I have none to give ;

I love the Lord-but with a love divine,

For by Thy love I live.

I am as nothing, and rejoice to be

Emptied and lost, and swallowed up in Thee!"

"One

In the East we have Sufiism, which is a form of sentimental mysticism precisely similar to that which has developed in Western Christendom. The Sufi seeks by concentration of affection on God to lose his own identity, as, on the other hand, the Buddhist sought by abstraction of mind to destroy his individuality. The following fable from Jelaleddin will illustrate this. It represents human love seeking admission into the sanctuary of the Divinity. knocked at the Beloved's door; and a voice from within cried, 'Who is there?' Then he answered, 'It is I.' And the voice said, 'This house will not hold me and thee;' so the door remained shut. Then the lover sped away into a wilderness, and fasted and prayed in solitude. And after a year he returned, and knocked again at the door, and again the voice demanded, 'Who is there?' and he said, 'It is Thou,' then the door was opened to him."

We must not seek to find careful analysis of thought among these ecstatic mystics, whose god is their own fancy, and whose religion is their disordered feelings. They are persons of ardent imaginations, with their senses in surexcitation, striving to lift the veil which conceals God, and succeeding only in therein entangling themselves.

It is in India that mystic ecstasy reaches its final excess, in the hope inspired by Yoga philosophy in the devotee of

obtaining the Ciddha, or union with the Divinity. On the borders of the Ganges, the Yogin strives by every exaggeration of torture to emancipate his soul, and confound it with God; falling into raptures of ecstatic love, his soul addresses the Deity as a wife speaks to her husband. Yogins swarming with vermin, covered with dirt, mixing filth with their food, running skewers through their cheeks, suspending themselves by hooks thrust into their flesh, standing on one foot for many years, lying for half a lifetime upon sharp nails, strive by withdrawing their affections from all things here below, to fix them with greater intensity on the Divinity above.

They labour under the same delusion as Madame Guyon, Marie de l'Incarnation, and Wesley, in supposing that religion consists exclusively of sentimentality, and that the affections, without the intellect, can reach and apprehend God.

Religion, to rise, must mount on two wings-Reason and Sentiment; and he who attempts to rise on one, remains fluttering vainly on the ground.

It is mournful to contemplate the change of character in the saints of the Catholic Church as ages pass away. Formerly, they were the leaders at once of intellect and of piety; men fervent in their zeal, and keen in their intelligence; and now they are ecstatics, crazy nuns and sentimental boys. At the head of the list stand Augustine, Ambrose, Athanasius, Chrysostom; and at the tail, Marie Alacoque, and Aloysius Gonzaga.

CHAPTER XVIII

SACRIFICE

The theory of compensation for wrong done-the basis of criminal law— Illustrations-Saxon, Indian, Icelandic law-The theory of compensation applied to religious wrongs-originates sacrifice-Life and honour the two best gifts--Rites of Moloch and Mylitta-Human sacrifices— among the Carthaginians-Arabs-Egyptians-Persians-Greek islands -Greeks-Romans-Gauls and Britons-Germans--Lithuanians-Scandinavians-American Indians-Peruvians-Aztecs-Dahomians-The prevalence of sacrifice not an evidence of a consciousness of sin-Expiatory sacrifices-when instituted-The sense of sin-The demand for expiation--Vicarious suffering according to natural law-Suffering the means of obtaining benefits.

WHEN

HEN an injury has been done by one man to another, he who has done the wrong must be compelled to make compensation for the wrong done, if he will not do so of his own accord. This is a law of social life. Without it society would be broken up. If every man might maltreat his neighbour without suffering for it, each man would be a centre of repulsion from whom every one else would fly. This law is a necessity, and is therefore an instinct, of humanity.

Among barbarous tribes, the person who is wronged redresses his wrong with his own hand. The community, however, claims a right of interfering between the parties, and fixing the amount of compensation due for the injury done. Upon this simple principle the whole fabric of

criminal law is built up. Revenge is a duty and a right, because it is a necessity. But the mode in which the revenge is effected is ruled by the tradition of the race. Among the Californian Indians, if the blood of a savage be shed, it is incumbent on his relatives to wipe it out with the blood of a member of another tribe, and often a guiltless person is tomahawked for the purpose. But among more civilized races, the family which has suffered may forego their vengeance, and take a compensation in goods or money for the loss sustained. Out of this arose those arbitrary tariffs for wounds or loss of life which are common among American Indians of the present day, and were prevalent among our own Teutonic and Scandinavian ancestors. These tariffs, settled by the tribe, are the first elements of the law of nations. It is the characteristic of the Saxon laws that they aimed at compensation, rather than retribution, and although they sanctioned capital punishment, they endeavoured in all cases to substitute a penalty in its place. The fine inflicted on a murderer was regulated according to the "were," or sum at which the life of the murdered party was valued: thus, if a man slew a freeman, he was to make compensation with a hundred shillings; the sum if he killed his slave was merely nominal, as it was supposed that he himself was the chief sufferer. If a man broke into the house of another, he was fined six shillings, and if a thief took away property from a dwelling, he was to make compensation with three times the value of the goods. Three shillings were deemed sufficient compensation for a broken rib, while a fine of twenty shillings was inflicted for a dislocation of the shoulder. If a man cut off the foot or struck out the eye of another, he was compelled to make satisfaction with fifty shillings. Each tooth had its fixed price; for a front tooth, six shil