The novels of Charles Brockden Brown, consisting of Wieland;or, The transformation. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the year 1793. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a sleep-walker. Jane Talbot. Ormond; or, The secret witness. Clara Howard; or, The enthusiasm of love. With a memoir of the author.

1804 JAN1E TALBOT.
to the house of prayer; while there, we may put on solemn
visages and mutter holy names. We may abstain from
profane amusements or unauthorized words; we may shlun,
as infections, the company of unbelievers. We may study
homilies and creeds; but all this, without rational activity
for others' good, is not religion. I see, in all this, nothing that I am accustomed to call by that name.
I see nothing but a narrow selfishness; sentiments of
fear degrading to the Deity; a bigotry that contracts the
view, that freezes the heart, that shuts up the avenues to
benevolent and generous feeling. This buckram stiffness
does not suit me. Out upon such monastic parade! I
will have none of it.
But then, it seems, there is danger to ourselves from
such attempts. In trying to save another from drowning,
may we not sometimes be drawn in ourselves? Are we
not taught to deprecate, not only evil, but temptation to
evil?
What madness, to trust our convictions, in a point of
such immense importance, to the contest of argument
with one of superior subtlety and knowledge! Is there
not presumption in such a trust?
Excellent advice is this to the mass of women; to those
to whom habit or childish fear or parental authority has
given their faith; who never doubted or inquired or reasoned for themselves. How easily is such a fabric to be
overturned! It can only stand by being never blown
upon. The least breath disperses it in air; the first tide
washes it away.
Now, I entertain no reverence for such a bubble. In
some sense, the religion of the timorous and uninquisitive
is true. In another sense it is false. Considering the
proofs on which it reposes, it is false, since it merely
originates in deference to the opinions of others, wrought
into belief by means of habit. It is on a level, as to the
proof which supports it, with the wildest dreams of savage
superstition, or the fumes of a dervise's fanaticism.
As to me, I was once just such a pretty fool in this
respect as the rest of my sex. I was easily taught to
regard religion not only as the safeguard of every virtue,
but even as the test of a good understanding. The name