NORTH.
Nor did this awe of a superior power present in the consciences of men, and violated there, discover itself solely in the vindications of punishment; but the great acts of virtue also led men to thoughts above humanity; nor did they otherwise conceive of the impulses of the mind, in the noblest actions, than as inspirations from the divinity.
SEWARD.
These opinions and views have prevailed in nations ignorant of religion, but in whose powerful nature the native sentiments of the human spirit disclosed themselves in full force; among whom, therefore, its actual tendencies may best be ascertained.
NORTH.
The same truths, deeply buried in human nature, may be recognised in different forms wherever its voice speaks in its strength. If one people have believed that Furies rose from their infernal beds to dog the steps of the murderer, wandering upon the Earth, others, from the same source of preternatural feeling, have believed that the body would bleed afresh at his approach, and that his unappeased ghost would haunt the place where Guilt had driven it out from life. The very conception of such crimes dilates the spirit to conceptions of the unseen powers which reign over human life, which walk unperceived among the paths of men, and which are universally believed to be enemies or punishers of human wickedness. If the history of superstition might be told at large, it would represent to us the conscience of man laid open by his Imagination, and would disclose, in fearful pictures, the reality of that connection which subsists in our nature between the apprehension of Good and Evil in the soul of man, and the apprehensions cognate with it of a world of invisible power, of which it is the eternal law that Good is required, and Evil hated and pursued.
TALBOYS.
These evidences attest that, even among those who have the least knowledge of Religion, whose judgments are least moulded by its spirit, there is an inseparable connection between Conscience and Religion; that its strong emotions always carry the soul to those conceptions which are most akin to its powers.
NORTH.
If, under the circumstances which produce the strongest feeling, such a tendency shows itself distinctly and in remarkable forms, then, under all circumstances, there will be fainter and more indistinct perception of this tendency?