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THE CAUSE AND CURE OF DISSENSIONS.

INTRODUCTORY TOPICS.

SECTION I.

Object of these pages-Reverie.

THE difficulties of the subject before us are felt by the writer to be above what any mortal, unguided by divine light, can surmount. Nor under any circumstances can more be expected, than the suggestion of trains of thought that may lead to other trains of a more lucid character, and so commence the process of approximation to that most desirable state when all the family of God on earth shall be of one heart and of one mind. Nothing in our view short of a miracle upon human nature, can promise such a result, but the clear exhibition of those causes of dissension which all parties and sects have only to see to reprobate, together with those principles, the practical adoption of which, without interfering with any one of their present honest convictions, would in the end produce all the harmony that can be expected among imperfect beings. Bare exhortation to union, though eloquent and forcible as an angel could use, till some method is pointed out which will lead to it without contravening what different portions of the church feel to be sacred and inviolable, will be powerless and vain. To array ourselves also against the spirit and measures of any specific portion, as the sole or principal cause of dissensions, when it may perhaps embody as much that is pleasing to God as

any other, would foreclose with them the success of our endeavor, would exasperate unkind feelings, and though it might please, could produce no better results upon those who should be spared the lash of our rod. Besides, all such partial representations are not true in fact, as every accurate and candid observer upon the course of human events must be convinced. The Upas tree of dissension strikes its roots alike into every division of the christian world, drawing from each, in degrees more nearly equal than may be imagined, its means of nourishment and growth.

From these suggestions, the truth of which will further appear in the course of this work, it will be seen that we enter upon a task which is likely to render us abhorrent in more points of view than one to those dear brethren for whom Christ died, of all parties and sects, who are pledged by their views or circumstances to perpetuate the existing position of the christian world. Our hope of doing the least good, therefore, is founded upon the success of prayer and honest endeavor to obtain His guidance to whom it is all alike to save by few or by many. The very

weakness of the instrument, by rendering the presence of Divine power more manifest, should perhaps, in a work to which all human hands are incompetent, rather increase than diminish the pious hope that these pages may have been in the eye of our Redeemer, as among the means of fulfilling his petition on the evening preceding the bloody tragedy of the cross, that all his people might be one as he was one with the Father. While our reliance is upon God,however, we feel assured that there is piety, love of truth for its own sake, integrity and conscience abroad, to which, under whatever religious nomenclatures arrayed, we can, in the name of Him whose truth we are sworn to speak, appeal, though forced by the nature of our subject to censure more than to praise.

And we know that this appeal to every element of christian magnanimity for a patient and candid hearing will not be in vain.

Most minds are probably sensible of lucid intervals, when the materials of thinking are thrown into unwonted combinations, and when a single idea awakes from their slumber an exhaustless train of interesting associations, causing the images of truth to flash with magic power before the soul, and placing the facts of life in brilliant perspective before the intellectual eye. At such moments how changed do all things seem from what they usually appear! How absurd our own impassioned pursuits! As we were musing deeply in one of these intervals upon the subject of these pages and the state of the christian world, we fell into the following reverie :

:

We imagined that one of those superior beings who are said to minister to the heirs of salvation, having been occupied from the first announcement of mercy for man, upon a mission to distant portions of the universe, could not gratify his desire of visiting our world till the present century. Much as he desired to look into the mystery of redemption, nothing of its progress during all this period reached him, but distant rumors that gave him but a limited idea of the magnificent reality. Leisure at length being allowed and permission given, he took his course direct in the line of the pencil of light from our ball, and more rapid than the sunbeam's flight rushed over the intervening distance. His chance was to light upon the highest Alpine summit, and doubting for a moment whether he might not have missed his course, he exclaimed, "is this earth, or has some other orb intercepted my journey?" Surveying the rude grandeur of the scenery around him, where

"Mountains pil'd on mountains, and Alps o'er Alps arise,"

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