nts to which they gave an impulse. In the purity of
female feelings we may have a security that any system that recommends
itself to women, must have a fair semblance of goodness as it appears in
their eyes: but it does not follow that their approbation is a test of
its genuine excellence, or of its actual conformity with the type which
it professes to represent. It is no novelty in the history of human
nature, that evil makes its first attempts on the weakness of woman.
Whatever is calculated strongly to excite the affections will gain the
hearts of the more susceptible sex; and, without the aid of stronger
intellects, they will run a risk of following after delusive lights, and
may be found as often to be the votaries of an amiable and attractive
error, as the assertors of a severe and sober truth. We would take leave
to affirm, that a religious creed or constitution among whose supporters
a vast preponderance of females was to be found, stood in a dubious
position, and was open to the suspicion that its principles cannot stand
examination by the standards of reason and argument. Certain it is that
this severance of the sexes by religious distinctions is an unnatural
state of society, and a serious evil. It is accompanied too, and
aggravated, by another source of danger. The system of hanging the faith
and feelings on the lips of a man, as if he were a special messenger
from heaven, is nothing else than Popery, and goes to put a pope in
every pulpit. Incessant sermons, itinerant speeches, public meetings,
devotional assemblies, form a round of excitement of a dangerous and
deceptive kind, and are little else than a species of decent
dissipation. The constant intervention of a favorite or fashionable
minister in all the exercises of religion, identifies too much the
sacred subject itself with the individual who presides over it; while
theatrical exhibitions of extemporaneous oratory and flights of fancy,
make the ordinary ritual of public worship, or the quiet practice of
private devotion, seem tame and trivial. The tendency of the evil is,
that the direct access to a communion with above is barred against the
deluded and dependent devotee, much in the same manner as the votaries
of Romanism are driven for aid to the intermediate intercession of the
Virgin and the Saints. If the devotion of women is to be maintained
mainly by the presence and personal influences of a spiritual guide and
prompter, the selection ought to b