172 THE HOLY LAND. 
ciiAP. discriminate between monkish mummery and 
simple truth, have considered the whole series 
of topographical evidence as one tissue of impos- 
ture, and have left the Holy Land worse Christians 
than they were when they arrived. Credulity 
and scepticism are neighbouring extremes : 
whosoever wholly abandons either of these, 
generally adopts the other. It is hardly possible 
to view the mind of man in a more forlorn and 
degraded state than when completely subdued 
by superstition ; yet this view of it is presented 
over a very considerable portion of the earth ; 
over all Asia, Africa, almost all America, and 
more than two-thirds oi Europe : indeed, it is 
difficult to say where society exists without 
betraying some or other of its modifications ; nor 
can there be suggested a more striking proof 
of the natural propensity in human nature 
towards this mental infirmity, than that Chris- 
tianiiy itself, the only effectual enemy super- 
stition ever had, should have been chosen for 
its basis. In the Holy Land, as in Russia, and 
perhaps in Spain and Portugal, the Gospel is 
only known by representations more foreign 
from its tenets than the worship of the sun 
and the moon. If a country which was once so 
disgraced by the feuds of a religious war 
should ever become the theatre of honourable 
