our plans of education, and the other is to conduct this study on those principles of induction, which guide our inquiries in the other departments of knowledge. We regard the inspired phenomena as a department in itself distinct and independent of all others as much as botany or mineralogy, and as a subject of investigation require the same mode of treatment. That is, they must be classified or divided into so many parts as the various topics on which they treat may seem to require. And then, on the principle of "comparing spiritual things with spiritual," all the particulars bearing upon each topic must be viewed together, that thus we may arrive at the sum of the truth which they teach. By comparing also that sum in each case with those of all the others and ascertaining its points of coincidence or difference, of agreement or disagreement, we shall be able to conduct legitimate processes of reasoning on the basis of the inspired subject-matter, and shall arrive at correct views of the whole economy of supernatural revelation. This course of religious investigation, which is little more than a carrying out of plans now in use, has this to recommend it; that it leaves us no measure or materials of thinking but the inspired phenomena, and it is so remote from the modes of reasoning from which our dissensions have arisen, that it might tend towards their final removal. Indeed, we go somewhat fully, not only into a plan for the actual classification of scripture, but also into an illustration of its tendency to dissolve those organized modes of thought and practice which perpetuate our strife, and to conduct us to all the uniformity which can be expected in beings of our constitution and circumstances. After going thus at length into the manner of conducting our religious investigations, we then notice the influence which a continual interest and effort to do good, will have in uniting christians; we balance the claims of a controversial and uncontroversial mode of doing good, and endeavor to show that the prospects of usefulness in our generation from the latter course are much above those of the former. We suppose, that the truth can gain nothing by our continuing the strife upon the things in which the Protestant sects differ; that the errors which they embrace retain their hold by means of those sectarian passions which controversy serves to incense; and that, therefore, they cannot be exploded in the usual way of controversial reasoning; but that by pursuing, on all hands, a course of noiseless well doing, in addition to our study of the scriptures at the same time on the simple plan of classification, these passions will ultimately die away, and thus all parties will, in the end, meet on the basis of the revealed subject-matter. We see not how others could dissent from our main positions on this point, even though they might accord to the controversies of past ages, the merit of having done much more good than we are willing to allow. As for ourselves, we confess our inability to discover in many of those which have raged for fifteen hundred years, so much freedom from sectarian influences, and so much independent and undisguised devotion to truth, as we deem necessary to secure any very beneficial results. They have not, however, been without their use, any more than war or other pernicious modes of wasting human talent, energy and life. And considering the channels into which religious investigation had been turned, we see not how they could have been avoided. Desirable as we think it is to terminate forever our controversy about the points at issue between the Protestant sects, we are far from wishing to treat with indiscriminate censure those who have been engaged in them in ages past. They had not the same means that we enjoy, of seeing how arbitrary and unnatural are many of these sectarian positions, or how remote from a legitimate interpetation of the inspired text, nor did such fields of usefulness, or such means of acting upon the mass of mind even in the dark parts of the earth, open upon their view, as those which now invite our benevolent exertions. Hence, what was proper in them may not be so in us. That we ought to change the course of investigation in religion, or adopt plans of action that shall leave sectarian strife forever out of the question, contains therefore, no implications of indiscriminate condemnation upon those holy and excellent men who have preceded us. In addition to our plan for securing inspired thoughts, and to our reasonings upon an uncontroversial mode of doing good, we introduce in our last chapter, some considerations on eminent attainments in piety, as a means of healing our dissensions. We suppose that the most of them may be traced to the influence of a low degree of religious faith, feeling and practice in those who are truly pious, or to the introduction of carnal men into the churches, and the prevalence of their spirit and maxims throughout all our ecclesiastical concerns. A higher standard of christian character, would lead to more courteousness in the intercourse between the different denominations, and to more healing measures: it would make a connection with the churches less desirable to unconverted men, and by improving discipline, would tend to remove those who are already among us; and finally, it would diffuse through the atmosmosphere of the church below, those peaceful influences which pervade the heavenly world. By a due use of these few points, we believe our controversies would be healed, and the peace of christians established on a permanent basis. PART I. THE CAUSE OF DISSENSIONS. CHAPTER I. Mistaken notions of the degree of uniformity which the gospel is adapted A fair exhibition, my beloved brethren, of the sources from which our dissensions arise would do much to wrest us from their influence, and to harmonize our views and feelings. When the cause of a disease is ascertained half the battle of its cure is won. Till we learn to what extent our divisions arise from a consistent zeal for the truth, and to what extent they spring from reprehensible causes, we shall be in no condition for the application of any efficient means of their cure. Without clear ideas on this point, we shall be in danger of coalesence with others in cases wherein we should contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints; or we shall sound the tocsin of war where we might better have concluded a peace. In most of the efforts at denominational union, we imagine we can detect either an unjustifiable apathy in regard to the truth itself, confused notions of the points upon which uniformity should be insisted, a lordly desire to extend the limits of a party by decoying others under its control, a disposition to clear one side of the blame of division and charge it all on the other or others, or like indications of narrow views, wrong state of feeling, or a total neglect to trace up the subject to its ultimate principles. That we shall succeed any better, we do not pretend, but only, that in the strength of God we will make the attempt. Be it distinctly understood, however, that every dissentient party is not to be condemned; for there are cases in which the interests of truth can be promoted in no other way. To controvert this position would foreclose the possibility of reform in a corrupt church, and even impeach the conduct of our Saviour and his disciples in interposing their decided opposition to the dominant party in the Jewish nation. Glad would have been the men in power of that nation and of all others to whose designs the darkness is convenient, to silence these notes of dissentious remonstrance. But neither Jesus nor his infant church could yield to such wishes. Their course was an uncompromising one. Death in their view was preferable to passive submission to the dark and dismal influences that were wielding the moral destinies of man. They were intolerant of evil in any of its forms, though entrenched around by all the passions, customs, interests, and circumstances of the social state. To error they gave not subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might be established. Theirs was a war, not of conquest merely, but of utter extermination. And upon the success of their cause they staked life, fortune and sacred honor. In their footsteps also, the intrepid reformers followed. Theirs too was a war of extermination upon existing opinions and institutions. Had the doctrine been believed and acted upon that dissent among christians real or pretended was never admissible, the civilized world would now be slumbering under the deadly incubus of the Roman hierarchy. The point, therefore, which we have in view is not to show that all dissensions, or, we should rather say perhaps, all controversies, among those who bear the |