'We sometimes see religious newspapers charging each other with
acts which should exclude the perpetrators from the fraternity of
_honest_ men; for, through the medium of religious newspapers, one
church, or one fraction of a church, or one ecclesiastical body, or
one member of it, accuses another of an act, or a course of action,
which, in sober truth, amounts to nothing more or less than
_obvious, persistent deception, dishonesty and trickery_.... Can
such be correct transcripts of facts? Is it true that a church, or
any body corporate, whose very existence as such is professedly to
cultivate and disseminate the principles of sound morality and true
religion, does fall so far short of the faith delivered to the
saints--does so far forget its origin, and pervert its aims, as to
violate common law and common honesty, and persist in its
violation, deliberately, against repeated remonstrances, by sheer
force? Yet we see no convulsion in the community. Nothing intimates
that a great grief is fallen upon Israel. Everybody eats, drinks,
and sleeps as usual. The pulpits still stand, and the law and the
gospel are appealed to from that vantage ground. The sacramental
cup is still raised to devout lips. The gray heads of the culprits
still go in and out among the people with no diminishing of
honor--no odium is attached to their persons; no stigmas to their
names. What a state of things does this argue! A whole church
plunges into darkness, and the

'Majestic heaven
Shines not the less for that one vanished star.'

'Can we wonder that the world will not let itself be converted? To
what should it be converted, if it were willing? Would it be an
advance for a community that sends its thieves to prison when it
catches them to merge itself in a community that is content to
print a few columns of _expose_ on the subject? If the stream where
you wish to drink is muddy, you will scarcely find clear waters by
descending. You want to go up, not down; up on the high lands where
threads of crystal cleave the gray old rocks, and gather purity
from earth's deep bosom and the sky's clear blue.

'If it is not so, if the acts only appear dishonest because we are
looking at one side, why do we not say so, or why do we say
anything about it?