be bound in heaven. There was not one
particle of intellectual freedom. No one was allowed to differ from
the church, or to even contradict a priest. Had Presbyterianism
maintained its ascendancy, Scotland would have been peopled by savages
today. The revengeful spirit of Calvin took possession of the Puritans
and caused them to redden the soil of the new world with the brave
blood of honest men. Clinging to the five points of Calvin, they, too,
established governments in accordance with the teachings of the old
testament. They, too, attached the penalty of death to the expression
of honest thought. They, too, believed their church supreme, and
exerted all their power to curse this continent with a spiritual
despotism as infamous as it was absurd. They believed with Luther that
universal toleration is universal error, and universal error is
universal hell. Toleration was denounced as a crime. Fortunately for
us, civilization has had a softening effect upon the Presbyterian
church. To the ennobling influence of the arts and science the savage
spirit of Calvinism has, in some slight degree, succumbed. True, the
old creed remains substantially as it was written, but by a kind of
tacit understanding it has come to be regarded as a relic of the past.
The cry of "heresy" has been growing fainter and fainter, and, as a
consequence, the ministers of that denomination have ventured now and
then to express doubts as to the damnation of infants, and the doctrine
of total depravity. The fact is, the old ideas became a little
monotonous to the people. The fall of man, the scheme of redemption
and irresistible grace, began to have a familiar sound. The preachers
told the old stories while the congregation slept. Some of the
ministers became tired of these stories themselves. The five points
grew dull, and they felt that nothing short of irresistible grace could
bear this endless repetition. The outside world was full of progress,
and in every direction men advanced, while the church, anchored to a
creed, idly rotted at the shore. Other denominations, imbued some
little with the spirit of investigation, were springing up on every
side, while the old Presbyterian ark rested on the Ararat of the past,
filled with the theological monsters of another age.

Lured by the splendors of the outer world, tempted by the achievements
of science, longing to feel the throw and beat of the mighty march of
the human race, a few of the m