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nts to which they gave an impulse. In the purity of female feelings we may have a security that any system that recommends itself to women, must have a fair semblance of goodness as it appears in their eyes: but it does not follow that their approbation is a test of its genuine excellence, or of its actual conformity with the type which it professes to represent. It is no novelty in the history of human nature, that evil makes its first attempts on the weakness of woman. Whatever is calculated strongly to excite the affections will gain the hearts of the more susceptible sex; and, without the aid of stronger intellects, they will run a risk of following after delusive lights, and may be found as often to be the votaries of an amiable and attractive error, as the assertors of a severe and sober truth. We would take leave to affirm, that a religious creed or constitution among whose supporters a vast preponderance of females was to be found, stood in a dubious position, and was open to the suspicion that its principles cannot stand examination by the standards of reason and argument. Certain it is that this severance of the sexes by religious distinctions is an unnatural state of society, and a serious evil. It is accompanied too, and aggravated, by another source of danger. The system of hanging the faith and feelings on the lips of a man, as if he were a special messenger from heaven, is nothing else than Popery, and goes to put a pope in every pulpit. Incessant sermons, itinerant speeches, public meetings, devotional assemblies, form a round of excitement of a dangerous and deceptive kind, and are little else than a species of decent dissipation. The constant intervention of a favorite or fashionable minister in all the exercises of religion, identifies too much the sacred subject itself with the individual who presides over it; while theatrical exhibitions of extemporaneous oratory and flights of fancy, make the ordinary ritual of public worship, or the quiet practice of private devotion, seem tame and trivial. The tendency of the evil is, that the direct access to a communion with above is barred against the deluded and dependent devotee, much in the same manner as the votaries of Romanism are driven for aid to the intermediate intercession of the Virgin and the Saints. If the devotion of women is to be maintained mainly by the presence and personal influences of a spiritual guide and prompter, the selection ought to b
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