souls,—­200,000 of the innumerable multitude with a natural taste for the bathos,—­to hold it, and 20,000 rifles to defend it.  And again, of another religious organisation in America:  “A fair and open field is not to be refused when hosts so mighty throw down wager of battle on behalf of what they hold to be true, however strange their faith may seem.”  A fair and open field is not to be refused to any speaker; but this solemn way of heralding him is quite out of place unless he has, for the best reason and spirit of man, some significance.  “Well, but,” says Mr. Hepworth Dixon, [116] “a theory which has been accepted by men like Judge Edmonds, Dr. Hare, Elder Frederick, and Professor Bush!” And again:  “Such are, in brief, the bases of what Newman Weeks, Sarah Horton, Deborah Butler, and the associated brethren, proclaimed in Rolt’s Hall as the new covenant!” If he was summing up an account of the teaching of Plato or St. Paul, Mr. Hepworth Dixon could not be more earnestly reverential.  But the question is, have personages like Judge Edmonds, and Newman Weeks, and Elderess Polly, and Elderess Antoinette, and the rest of Mr. Hepworth Dixon’s heroes and heroines, anything of the weight and significance for the best reason and spirit of man that Plato and St. Paul have?  Evidently they, at present, have not; and a very small taste of them and their doctrines ought to have convinced Mr. Hepworth Dixon that they never could have.  “But,” says he, “the magnetic power which Shakerism is exercising on American thought would of itself compel us,”—­and so on.  Now as far as real thought is concerned,—­thought which affects the best reason and spirit of man, the scientific thought of the world, the only thought which deserves [117] speaking of in this solemn way,—­America has up to the present time been hardly more than a province of England, and even now would not herself claim to be more than abreast of England; and of this only real human thought, English thought itself is not just now, as we must all admit, one of the most significant factors.  Neither, then, can American thought be; and the magnetic power which Shakerism exercises on American thought is about as important, for the best reason and spirit of man, as the magnetic power which Mr. Murphy exercises on Birmingham Protestantism.  And as we shall never get rid of our natural taste for the bathos in religion,—­never get access to a best self and right reason which may stand as a serious authority,—­by treating Mr. Murphy as his own disciples treat him, seriously, and as if he was as much an authority as any one else:  so we shall never get rid of it while our able and popular writers treat their Joe Smiths and Deborah Butlers, with their so many thousand souls and so many thousand rifles, in the like exaggerated and misleading manner, and so do their best to confirm us in a bad mental habit to which we are already too prone.