PREFACE
TO THE FOLLOWING DRAMA, WHEN FIRST PUBLISHED
IN THE YEAR 1826.
Of all the principles of human action, Religion is the strongest. It is often, indeed, overcome by others, and even by those which may be considered as very weak antagonists; yet, on great emergencies it surmounts them all, and it is master of them all for general and continued operation. In every country and nation, under som form or other, though often dark and distorted, it holds warfare with vice and immorality; either by destroying corrupted selfishness, or by rendering it tributary. And dear and intolerable to the feelings of nature are the tributes it will voluntarily offer,—fasting, scourging, wounds and humiliation;—the humiliation of all worldly distinction, when the light of reason as well as the robe of dignity are thrown aside. A great philosophical writer*[1] of our own days, after having mentioned some of the sceptical works of Hume, says, "Should not rather the melancholy
- ↑ * Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. i. p. 368.
