quence, like those of Channing, float from a distance on its heavy silence! Such, then, are the objects which should be contemplated by those who, in the present times, aim at the reformation of religious sentiment: first, the elevation of theology as an intellectual pursuit; secondly, the better application of religion as a moral influence. Both these objects are directly or indirectly promoted by the Association, whose cause I am privileged to advocate. It aids the first, by the distribution of many a work, the production of such minds as must redeem theology from contempt. It advances the second, by establishing union and sympathy among those, whose first principles are in direct contradiction to all that is sectarian, and who desire only to emancipate the understanding from all that enfeebles, and the heart from all that narrows it. The triumph of its doctrines would be, not the ascendancy of one sect, but the harmony of all. Let but the diversities which separate Christians retire, and the truths which they all profess to love advance to prominence, and, whatever may become of party names, our aims are fulfilled, and our satisfaction is complete. When faith in the paternity of God shall have kindled an affectionate and lofty devotion; when the vision of immortality, imparted by Christ's resurrection, shall have created that spirit of duty which was the holiest inspiration of his life; when the sincere recognition of human brotherhood shall have supplanted all exclusive institutions, and banded society together under the vow of mutual aid, and the hope of everlasting progress, our work will be done, our reward before us, and our little community of reformers lost in the wide fraternity of enlightened and benevolent men. The day is yet distant, and can be won only by the toil of earnest and faithful minds. In the meanwhile, it is no light solace to see that the tendencies of Providence are towards its accelerated approach. And however dispiriting may sometimes be the variety and conflicts of human sentiment, - however remote the dissonance of controversy from that harmony of will which would seem essential to perfected society, it is through this very process that the great ends of improvement are to be attained. Hereafter it will be seen, much more clearly than we can see it now, that opinion generates knowledge. Like the ethereal waves, whose inconceivable rapidity and number are said to impart the sensation of vision, the undulations of opinion are speeding on to produce the perception of truth: they are the infinitely complex and delicate movements of that universal Human Mind, whose quiescence is darkness, whose agitation, light. - |