in the Land, in that they did not wish all the Lord’s People to be Prophets, and call forth Private Brethren publickly to prophesie.  While he was thus in the midst of his Exercise, God smote him with horrible Madness; he was taken ravingly distracted; the People were forc’d with violent Hands to carry him home....  I will not mention his Name:  He was reputed a Pious Man.”—­This is one of Cotton’s “Remarkable Judgments of God, on Several Sorts of Offenders,”—­and the next cases referred to are the Judgments on the “Abominable Sacrilege” of not paying the Ministers’ Salaries.

This sort of thing doesn’t do here and now, you see, my young friend!  We talk about our free institutions;—­they are nothing but a coarse outside machinery to secure the freedom of individual thought.  The President of the United States is only the engine-driver of our broad-gauge mail-train; and every honest, independent thinker has a seat in the first-class cars behind him.

——­There is something in what you say,—­replied the divinity-student;—­and yet it seems to me there are places and times where disputed doctrines of religion should not be introduced.  You would not attack a church dogma—­say, Total Depravity—­in a lyceum-lecture, for instance?

Certainly not; I should choose another place,—­I answered.—­But, mind you, at this table I think it is very different.  I shall express my ideas on any subject I like.  The laws of the lecture-room, to which my friends and myself are always amenable, do not hold here.  I shall not often give arguments, but frequently opinions,—­I trust with courtesy and propriety, but, at any rate, with such natural forms of expression as it has pleased the Almighty to bestow upon me.

A man’s opinions, look you, are generally of much more value than his arguments.  These last are made by his brain, and perhaps he does not believe the proposition they tend to prove,—­as is often the case with paid lawyers; but opinions are formed by our whole nature,—­brain, heart, instinct, brute life, everything all our experience has shaped for us by contact with the whole circle of our being.

——­There is one thing more,—­said the divinity-student,—­that I wished to speak of; I mean that idea of yours, expressed some time since, of depolarizing the text of sacred books in order to judge them fairly.  May I ask why you do not try the experiment yourself?

Certainly,—­I replied,—­if it gives you any pleasure to ask foolish questions.  I think the ocean telegraph-wire ought to be laid and will be laid, but I don’t know that you have any right to ask me to go and lay it.  But, for that matter, I have heard a good deal of Scripture depolarized in and out of the pulpit.  I heard the Rev. Mr. F. once depolarize the story of the Prodigal Son in Park-Street Church.  Many years afterwards, I heard him repeat the same or a similar depolarized version in Rome, New York.  I heard an admirable