l departures from ancient doctrinal
symbols.

Suspects are numerous, and, as in the days of the worthy Council of
Ten in Venice, no prominent person, especially a teacher, is beyond
surveillance. If he adventures just a little from the beaten path,
even though it may be to gather a thought, which, like a wild field
daisy, given by the bounty of the Infinite One for the delight of his
creatures, he has found growing on the wind-swept plain of natural
religion, honored possibly by heathen seers and philosophers, he is
likely to be summoned before the black draped, gloomy councillors and
familiars of modern inquisitorial conservatism.

In my opinion there is no real need for the morbid anxiety that now
prevails in certain quarters, and surely no serious alarm should be
felt for the perpetuity and stability of truth. Truth is truth, and
all the bad captains that ever sailed that bark, and all the bad
navigators that ever misdirected its course, have never been able to
run it on the lee shore, or bring it to final shipwreck, and never
can; for over and above all human devices and guidings there is a
divine hand that upholds and shields that which, next to his Infinite
Self, is the most precious blessing yet conferred upon the human mind.

Let us remember that the heresies of the hour are not of the "damnable
sort" which, as Peter declared, deny the Lord who bought us; neither
are they mixed with such immoralities as Paul condemns in his letter
to the Galatians. And if we may believe that the words of that same
apostle have any pertinency in our times, then, when he declares that
heresies or schisms must arise among us "that they which are proved
may be made manifest," we may confidently expect that out of the
present discussions and the "jangling of sweet notes out of tune" some
broader thought and some nobler conception of divine teachings,
revealed to us in Holy Scripture, will assuredly come to the church
and to the world.

I think that the leaders who are solicitous for the ark of God ought
to try to characterize the opinions which have given rise, in these
latter days, to threatened trials for heterodoxy. It is so easy to say
that a man who differs from ourselves is not orthodox, and to avoid an
actual and exact statement of what we mean; when in fact we deal
unjustly with him, and produce a wrong impression on the community at
large.

Let us notice the three distinctive and discriminating marks of
so-called here