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them in the most gross way, lie accused them of having obtained from him twelve thousand goats, some hundred weight of sweetmeats, two thousand gallons of milk, etc., under false pretences.' ... He then ordered all the artillery, varying from three to twelve-pounders, to he brought in front of the palace.... All the guns were then loaded to the muzzle, and down he marched to the headquarters of the Nepaul deities.... All the guns were drawn up in front of the several deities, honoring the most sacred with the heaviest metal. When the order to fire was given, many of the chiefs and soldiers ran away panic-stricken, and others hesitated to obey the sacrilegious order; and not until several gunners had been cut down, were the guns opened. Down came the gods and goddesses from their hitherto sacred positions; and, after six hours' heavy cannonading, not a vestige of the deities remained."^[1]

This, which is one of the most remarkable pieces of iconoclasm on record, exhibits in an extreme form the reactive antagonism usually accompanying abandonment of an old belief—an antagonism that is high in proportion as the previous submission has been profound. By stabling their horses in cathedrals and treating the sacred places and symbols with intentional insult, the Puritans displayed this feeling in a marked manner; as again did the French revolutionists by pulling down sacristies and altar-tables, tearing mass-books into cartridge-papers, drinking brandy out of chalices, eating mackerel off patenas, making mock ecclesiastical processions, and holding drunken revels in churches. Though in our day the breaking of bonds less rigid, effected by struggles less violent, is followed by a less excessive opposition and hatred, yet habitually the throwing-off of the old form implies a replacing of the previous sympathy by more or less of antipathy: perversion of judgment caused by the antipathy taking the place of that caused by the sympathy. What before was reverenced as wholly true is now scorned as wholly false; and what was regarded as invaluable is now rejected as of no value at all.

In some, this state of sentiment and belief continues. In others, the reaction is in course of time followed by a re-reaction. To carry out the Carlylean figure, the old clothes that had been outgrown and were finally torn off and thrown aside with contempt, come presently to be looked back upon with more calmness and with the recognition that they did good service in their time—nay, perhaps with the doubt whether they were not thrown off too soon. This re-reaction may be feeble or may be strong; but only when it takes place in due amount is there a possibility of balanced judgments either on religious questions or on those questions of Social Science into which the religious element enters.

Here we have to glance at the sociological errors into which the anti-theological bias betrays those in whom it does not become qualified. Thinking only of what is erroneous in the rejected creed, they ignore the truth for which it stands; contemplating only its mischiefs,

1. "Five Years' Residence in Nepaul," by Captain Thomas Smith, vol. i., p. 168.