10
to the opposite extreme of throwing aside religion to 'a more convenient season,' when the pleasures of life should have lost their charm, and they themselves should be drawing near the close of their pilgrimage. That theory which made a deadly sin of that which was at worst but a pardonable misdemeanor and perhaps wholly innocent in its nature, could not fail in time to react violently, first through the process of disgust, then through that of inquiry, and finally to the carrying of speculation to extremes, and practically pronouncing harmless and innocent that which was really vice. The popular mind, rebounding from the Puritan ideas, did not pause to discriminate between the truth and error which were so intimately mingled in their system, but, sweepingly denouncing all the theories whose most prominent characteristics were revolting, involved in the denunciation and rejection much of pure and simple truth, and ran rapidly along the path of revolution, heedless of every warning, unchecked by the obstacles which Truth threw in its way, down to the present time of almost universal looseness.
Another effect of this rebellion of the national mind against the Puritan theories is seen in the almost yearly inauguration of some new sect in religion, in a land which is already so crowded with diverse and antagonistic religious organizations that it might be termed the land of sects. However right or wrong in a religious point of view, the Puritans committed the great social mistake of establishing a new church, instead of working earnestly to reform the old in those respects in which it seemed to them to have fallen into error, thereby destroying the unity of the Christian world. Had the movement stopped here, less harm would have been done; but it was not of the nature of things that it should be so. The establishment of the principle that purity of worship and of belief was to be sought, and diversity of religious opinion to be gratified in separation and the erection of new organizations, rather th