e other nations for vice, there is, nevertheless, in our
midst, little of that simple, trusting, unquestioning faith, which is
the 'substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not
seen'--little of that all-pervading and all-powerful reverence for
sacred things, that deep religious feeling which forms a portion of the
very life of most of the nations of the Old World. This is nothing more
than the reaction of the stern Puritan tenets of the colonial times. It
is the logical result of those dark and gloomy theories which aimed to
make religion not only unpalatable but absolutely repelling to the young
and the ardent, causing them to fly to the opposite extreme of throwing
aside religion to 'a more convenient season,' when the pleasures of life
should have lost their charm, and they themselves should be drawing near
the close of their pilgrimage. That theory which made a deadly sin of
that which was at worst but a pardonable misdemeanor and perhaps wholly
innocent in its nature, could not fail in time to react violently, first
through the process of disgust, then through that of inquiry, and
finally to the carrying of speculation to extremes, and practically
pronouncing harmless and innocent that which was really vice. The
popular mind, rebounding from the Puritan ideas, did not pause to
discriminate between the truth and error which were so intimately
mingled in their system, but, sweepingly denouncing all the theories
whose most prominent characteristics were revolting, involved in the
denunciation and rejection much of pure and simple truth, and ran
rapidly along the path of revolution, heedless of every warning,
unchecked by the obstacles which Truth threw in its way, down to the
present time of almost universal looseness.

Another effect of this rebellion of the national mind against the
Puritan theories is seen in the almost yearly inauguration of some new
sect in religion, in a land which is already so crowded with diverse and
antagonistic religious organizations that it might be termed the land of
sects. However right or wrong in a religious point of view, the Puritans
committed the great _social_ mistake of establishing a new church,
instead of working earnestly to reform the old in those respects in
which it seemed to them to have fallen into error, thereby destroying
the unity of the Christian world. Had the movement stopped here, less
harm would have been done; but it was not of the nature of things