ent with offers of pardon to
beseech them to be reconciled to God. Man sins, and the Deity Himself
becomes incarnate. All the machinery of nature and all the resources of
Heaven are employed to save him from destruction. One sin shuts up in
everlasting despair millions of spiritual beings, while a thousand
transgressions are forgiven to man."

Now this doctrine, instead of reflecting peculiar glory on God, seemed
to me to savor of blasphemy. It is no honor to be partial or capricious;
it is a reproach. A father that should be tenderly indulgent to one of
his children, and rigidly severe to the rest, would be regarded with
indignation. The doctrine of Divine partiality shocks both our reason
and our moral feelings. And it is not scriptural. The Bible says nothing
about God dooming the rebellious angels to perdition for one sin,
without any attempt to bring them back to obedience; but it does say
that God is good to all, and that His tender mercies are over all His
works. I accordingly rejected the doctrine. There was quite a multitude
of _doctrines_ which entered into the sermons of many of my brother
ministers, which never found their way into mine. And there were
doctrines which entered into my discourses, which never found their way
into theirs. And the doctrines which we held and preached in common, we
often presented in very different forms, and put into very different
words. They could say a multitude of things which I could not say;
things which I could find no kind of warrant for saying. When we met
together after hearing each other preach, we had at times long talks
about our different views and ways of preaching. I was free in
expressing my thoughts and feelings, especially in the earlier years of
my ministry, and our conversations were often very animated.

In some circuits, I induced my colleagues to join me in establishing
weekly meetings for mutual improvement in religious knowledge. At each
meeting an essay was read, on some subject agreed upon at a former
meeting, and after the essay had been read we discussed the merits both
of the sentiments it embodied, and of the style in which it was
written. When it was my turn to prepare an essay, I generally introduced
one or more of the points on which I and my colleagues differed, for the
purpose of having them discussed. I stated my views with the utmost
freedom, and gave every encouragement to my colleagues to state theirs
with equal freedom in return. When m