214 RELIGIOUS FEELING 



any other kind of terror or horror is a bagatelle. And they 

 feed this insane fear it is fed for them by all the Bible 

 texts that relate to damnation, perdition, eternal punishment, 

 wrath, and vengeance. To and by themselves personally all 

 such texts are applied as to persons who have sinned beyond 

 hope of mercy or forgiveness. Such are the common major 

 morbid forms of religious fear the major morbid results of 

 fear as an element in religion. 



But the minor forms and results are much more common 

 for instance, in Presbyterian Scotland so much so as to 

 taint or tone society in general. 



In this and other highly civilised countries there are 

 whole classes of people who are characterised either by a 

 want of the religious sentiment or by its very low develop- 

 ment even under education. This may be said, for instance, 

 of 



1. The whole criminal class, as we meet with its members 

 in our great prisons. 



2. The vagrant class, including certain tribes or kinds at 

 least of gipsies or tinkers, who are not necessarily or always 

 criminal or vicious. 



3. A large proportion of the lower or uneducated classes 

 in all our large centres of population. 



Thus of the cave-dwellers of Caithness Dr. Mitchell 

 declared in 1866, 'They went to no church, and had no 

 religious beliefs or worship.' The French peasantry of the 

 present day, as their characteristics are sketched by Hamer- 

 ton, exhibit the following among many other evidences of 

 superstition: 'The women go on the Day of the Purification 

 to read the Gospel to the bees. ... I have seen this done, 

 and done in serious earnest, with a perfect faith that the bees 

 could derive spiritual advantage from the reading, and were 

 at least so far Christians.' * And among the same peasants 

 also there is still a belief in sorcery.* While of a class repre- 

 senting the average civilisation of the metropolis of the 

 world Lord Lyttelton, in replying to Mr. W. R. Greg's ' Rocks 

 Ahead,' remarks apropos of popular Christianity in the capital 

 of England, ' What warrant have we for supposing that the 

 1 Round my House,' 1876, p. 254. 2 Ibid. p. 256. 



