15 be adjusted, because I looked upon that religious denomination as one of the great props of religion and morals, throughout the whole country, from Maine to Georgia, and westward, to our utmost western boundary. The result was against my wishes and against my hopes. I have read all their proceedings, and all their arguments ; but I have never yet been able to come to the conclusion that there was any real ground for that separation ; in other words, that any good could be produced by that separation. I must say I think there was some want of candor and charity. Sir, when a question of this kind seizes on the religious sentiments of mankind, and comes to be discussed in religious assemblies of the clergy and laity, there is always to be expected, or always to be feared, a great degree of excitement. It is in the nature of man, manifested by his whole history, that religious disputes are apt to become warm, as men’s strength of conviction is proportionate to their views of the magnitude of the questions. In all such disputes, there will sometimes men be found with whom everything is absolute, absolutely wrong, or absolutely right. They see the right clearly; they think others ought so to see it, and they are disposed to establish a broad line of distinction between what is right, and what is wrong. And they are not seldom willing to establish that line upon their own convictions of truth and justice; and are ready to mark and guard it, by placing along it a series of dogmas, as lines of boundary on the earth’s surface are marked by posts and stones. There are men who, with clear perceptions, as they think, of their own duty,
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