bly which do not affect our own persons, — rightly shuddering through every nerve when the Republic is endangered by treacherous friends, and the hurt of the Church is slightly healed, we will not be implacable when God forgives. When those men, North or South, who have sinned against human rights; who have sought to place chains upon the necks of freemen, or who have not sought to remove the chains from the necks of the enslaved; who, in the pursuit of their unrighteous ends, have desolated homes, destroyed life, and publicly perverted justice; who have trampled upon the Constitution that would not be wrested to their evil purposes; who have counted the blood that was shed for freedom of little worth; who have sinned most deeply in this, that they have sought to poison the fountains of virtue; who have wrought ill to the Republic most in this, that they have not assaulted her from without, but have laid hold of her strength within, pouring into her veins the turbid flow of vile self-seeking, instead of the vigorous pulse of universal right, hastening her on thereby to premature senility and decay; who have even gone into the sanctuary, and laid unholy hands upon the ark of the covenant, making the word of God of none effect by their traditions; who have uncovered the nakedness of the land that gave them birth, causing her name to become a by-word, a reproach, and a hissing among the

nations; when even these shall bethink themselves, and repent, and make supplication unto the Lord, saying, "We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness"; and so return unto the Lord with all their heart, and with all their soul, then will we too, remembering the plague of our own hearts, join our voices with theirs to the Lord God of Israel, crying, "Hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy dwelling-place, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people that have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee; for they be thy people."

Thus, in all times of our adversity and in all times of our prosperity, in the hour of death and in the day of judgment, shall we be able to say without rebuke, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

XIV.

ERROR.

T is no matter what a man believes, provided he is sincere in his belief, - is a somewhat common affirmation. It comes chiefly from those who seem to think that liberality consists in having no boundary lines, that there is no such thing as religious truth, and that, though convictions must be tolerated among the masses on account of the shallowness of their minds, and the narrowness of their views, yet the true condition of the highest humanity is a vast and barren negation; or it comes from those who are too indifferent or indolent to search among the foundations of faith, and, either too blind to recognize, or too disingenuous to confess such indifference and indolence, endeavor to satisfy and excuse themselves by believing that the object is insignificant and the pursuit unworthy; or from men of warm hearts, and acute, but not large observation, who see in every sect benevo

lent, virtuous, and Christian individuals, and who can in no other way reconcile discrepancies of faith and uniformity of practice.

"No matter what a man believes, if he is only sincere!" rejoin those whose business and pleasure it is to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. "But if a man is awakened at night by the cry that his house is on fire, and refuses to rise and flee because he believes the alarm to be false, will his belief save him from the flames? Will he not just as surely perish as if he did not so believe? A man eats poison thinking it to be food, but shall he not surely die? His belief is sincere, but it does not save him from death."

And this is called refutation. The error is supposed to be disproved, - shown to be absurd.

This is not refutation, not a sound, thorough, logical, satisfactory refutation. The cases are not parallel. If the cases are parallel, and it is a refutation, the matter stands thus: As the death of the body inevitably results from a wrong belief in the one case, so the death of the soul inevitably results from a wrong belief in the other case. It follows that every Universalist and Unitarian and Roman Catholic will be forever lost; for they believe to be false certain statements which we hold to be fundamental truths. It follows also, that every pagan, every idiot, every baby, from simple lack of belief in the Gospel, whether he

has ever heard of the Gospel or not, whether he has ability to understand its conditions and meet its requirements or not, will be lost, as the unconscious invalid or the sleeping child would be lost in the burning house. In fact, the illustration is of the most superficial kind. On the face of it, for a moment, it may appear to be accurate, but it does not stand the test of the slightest examination. It leaves the real difficulty untouched, and it assumes what is not true, and so creates a new difficulty, and is an obscuration rather than an illustration. It assumes that moral law is like physical law. Doubtless, in the eyes of God, moral law is just as exactly defined, its causes and effects are just as accurately determined, its logical connections are just as rigorously established, as are those of material law; but not to our eyes. We are not wise overmuch in material law. We know cause and effect to but a limited extent. A thousand modifications come in between our data and our conclusions, and greatly affect the result. But moral law, so far as it falls within our scope, does not pretend to anything like the accuracy of material law. Motives, inducements, temptations, education, a thousand circumstances of which one mind only is cognizant, are to be taken into the account. In material law result is everything; motive nothing. A man may burn his house or poison his friend from carelessness or mistaken love, but the house burns and the friend