4:32 THE USE OF ANTHE0P0M0EPH18M. 



ascribed to the deity cease to be so predominant in the 

 conception of him. And gradually, as all need for restraint 

 disappears, this conception approximates towards that of 

 a purely beneficent necessity. Thus, man's constitution is 

 in this, as in other respects, self-adjusting, self-balancing. 

 The mind itself evolves a compensating check to its own 

 movements ; varying always in proportion to the require- 

 ment. Its centrifugal and its centripetal forces are neces- 

 sarily in correspondence, because the one generates the 

 other. And so we find that the forms of both religious 

 and secular rule follow the same law. As an ill- controlled 

 national character produces a despotic terrestrial govern- 

 ment, so also does it produce a despotic celestial govern- 

 ment — the one acting through the senses, the other 

 through the imagination ; and in the converse case the 

 same relationsliip holds good. 



Organic as this relationship is in its origin, no artificial 

 interference can permanently afiect it. Whatever pertur- 

 bations an external agency may seem to produce, they are 

 soon neutralized in fact, if not in appearance. I was re- 

 cently struck with this in reading a missionary account of 

 the " gracious visitations of the Holy Spirit at Yewa," one 

 of the Feejee islands. Describing a " penitent meeting," 

 the account says : — 



" Certainly the feelings of the Yewa people were not ordi- 

 nary. They literally roared for hours together for the disquietude 

 of their souls. This frequently terminated in fainting from ex- 

 haustion, which was the only respite some of them had till they 

 found peace. They no sooner recovered their consciousness than 

 they prayed themselves first into an agony, then again into a state 

 of entire insetisibility." 



Xow these Feejee islanders are the most savage of all 

 the uncivilized races. They are given to cannibalism, in 

 fanticide, and human sacrifices ; they are so bloodthirst^f 



