se
principles they abhorred. Universally it is evident, that little stress is
to be laid on a negative act; simply to have declined going out with the
Seceders proves nothing, for it is equivocal. It is an act which may cover
indifferently a marked hostility to the Secession party, or an absolute
friendliness, but a friendliness not quite equal to so extreme a test. And,
again, this negative act may be equivocal in a different way; the
friendliness may not only have existed, but may have existed in strength
sufficient for any test whatever; not the principles of the Seceders, but
their Jacobinical mode of asserting them, may have proved the true nerve
of the repulsion to many. What is it that we wish the English reader to
collect from these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone
past. The earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of the general
tendency in all dangers to come round by successive and reiterated shocks--

"The earthquake is not satisfied at once."

All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers; they intermit,
only as the revolving lamps of a lighthouse are periodically eclipsed. The
General Assembly of 1843, when closing her gates upon the Seceders, shut
_in_, perhaps, more of the infected than at that time she succeeded in
shutting _out_. As respected the opinion of the world outside, it seemed
advisable to shut out the least number possible; for in proportion to the
number of the Seceders, was the danger that they should carry with them an
authentic impression in their favour. On the other hand, as respected a
greater danger, (the danger from internal contagion,) it seemed advisable
that the church should have shut out (if she could) very many of those who,
for the present, adhered to her. The broader the separation, and the more
absolute, between the church and the secession, so much the less anxiety
there would have survived lest the rent should spread. That the anxiety in
this respect is not visionary, the reader may satisfy himself by looking
over a remarkable pamphlet, which professes by its title to separate the
_wheat from the chaff_. By the "wheat," in the view of this writer, is
meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their recusant policy up to
the practical result of secession. All who stopped short of that
consummation, (on whatever plea,) are the "chaff." The writer is something
of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but he is consistent with
rega