alluded to. A
lamentable increase of sectarianism has followed; being occasioned (in
addition to other more obvious causes), first, by the cold aspect
which the new Church doctrines have presented to the religious
sensibilities of the mind, next to their meagreness in suggesting
motives to restrain it from seeking out a more influential discipline.
Doubtless obedience to the law of the land, and the careful
maintenance of "decency and order" (the topics in usage among us),
are plain duties of the Gospel, and a reasonable ground for keeping in
communion with the Established Church; yet, if Providence has
graciously provided for our weakness more interesting and constraining
motives, it is a sin thanklessly to neglect them; just as it would be
a mistake to rest the duties of temperance or justice on the mere law
of natural religion, when they are mercifully sanctioned in the Gospel
by the more winning authority of our Saviour Christ. Experience has
shown the inefficacy of the mere injunctions of Church order, however
scripturally enforced, in restraining from schism the awakened and
anxious sinner; who goes to a dissenting preacher "because" (as he
expresses it) "he gets good from him": and though he does not stand
excused in God's sight for yielding to the temptation, surely the
ministers of the Church are not blameless if, by keeping back the more
gracious and consoling truths provided for the little ones of Christ,
they indirectly lead him into it. Had he been taught as a child, that
the Sacraments, not preaching, are the sources of Divine Grace; that
the Apostolical ministry had a virtue in it which went out over the
whole Church, when sought by the prayer of faith; that fellowship with
it was a gift and privilege, as well as a duty, we could not have had
so many wanderers from our fold, nor so many cold hearts within it.

This instance may suggest many others of the superior _influence_ of
an apostolical over a mere secular method of teaching. The awakened
mind knows its wants, but cannot provide for them; and in its hunger
will feed upon ashes, if it cannot obtain the pure milk of the word.
Methodism and Popery are in different ways the refuge of those whom
the Church stints of the gifts of grace; they are the foster-mothers
of abandoned children. The neglect of the daily service, the
desecration of festivals, the Eucharist scantily administered,