n too long
neglected, and a society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and
mosquitos was to be incorporated without delay. With these appeared the
adepts of homoeopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and
their wonderful theories of the Christian miracles! Others assailed
particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of
the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of the scholar. Others attacked the
institution of marriage as the fountain of social evils. Others devoted
themselves to the worrying of churches and meetings for public worship;
and the fertile forms of antinomianism among the elder puritans seemed
to have their match in the plenty of the new harvest of reform.

With this din of opinion and debate there was a keener scrutiny of
institutions and domestic life than any we had known; there was sincere
protesting against existing evils, and there were changes of employment
dictated by conscience. No doubt there was plentiful vaporing, and cases
of backsliding might occur. But in each of these movements emerged
a good result, a tendency to the adoption of simpler methods, and an
assertion of the sufficiency of the private man. Thus it was directly in
the spirit and genius of the age, what happened in one instance when a
church censured and threatened to excommunicate one of its members on
account of the somewhat hostile part to the church which his conscience
led him to take in the anti-slavery business; the threatened individual
immediately excommunicated the church in a public and formal process.
This has been several times repeated: it was excellent when it was done
the first time, but of course loses all value when it is copied. Every
project in the history of reform, no matter how violent and surprising,
is good when it is the dictate of a man's genius and constitution, but
very dull and suspicious when adopted from another. It is right and
beautiful in any man to say, 'I will take this coat, or this book, or
this measure of corn of yours,'--in whom we see the act to be original,
and to flow from the whole spirit and faith of him; for then that taking
will have a giving as free and divine; but we are very easily disposed
to resist the same generosity of speech when we miss originality and
truth to character in it.

There was in all the practical activities of New England for the last
quarter of a century, a gradual withdrawal of tender consciences from
the social organizatio