I have now before me a list (prepared by a much stronger hand than mine) of honest cases in which men, avoiding Scylla, run into Charybdis:  in which men, thinking to bend the crooked twig straight, bend it backwards.  But before mentioning these, it may be remarked, that there is often such a thing as a reaction from a natural tendency, even when that natural tendency is not towards what may be called a primary vulgar error.  The law of reaction extends to all that human beings can ever feel the disposition to think or do.  There are, doubtless, minds of great fixity of opinion and motive:  and there are certain things, in the case of almost all men, as regards which their belief and their active bias never vary through life:  but with most human beings, with nations, with humankind, as regards very many and very important matters, as surely and as far as the pendulum has swung to the right, so surely and so far will it swing to the left.  I do not say that an opinion in favour of monarchy is a primary vulgar error; or that an opinion in favour of republicanism is a secondary:  both may be equally right:  but assuredly each of these is a reaction from the other.  America, for instance, is one great reaction from Europe.  The principle on which these reactionary swings of the pendulum take place, is plain.  Whatever be your present position, you feel its evils and drawbacks keenly.  Your feeling of the present evil is much more vivid than your imagination of the evil which is sure to be inherent in the opposite system, whatever that may be.  You live in a country where the national Church is Presbyterian.  You see, day by day, many inconveniences and disadvantages inherent in that form of church government.  It is of the nature of evil to make its presence much more keenly felt than the presence of good.  So while keenly alive to the drawbacks of presbytery, you are hardly conscious of its advantages.  You swing over, let us suppose, to the other end:  you swing over from Scotland into England, from presbytery to episcopacy.  For awhile you are quite delighted to find yourself free from the little evils of which you had been wont to complain.  But by and bye the drawbacks of episcopacy begin to push themselves upon your notice.  You have escaped one set of disadvantages:  you find that you have got into the middle of another.  Scylla no longer bellows in your hearing; but Charybdis whirls you round.  You begin to feel that the country and the system yet remain to be sought, in which some form of evil, of inconvenience, of worry, shall not press you.  Am I wrong in fancying, dear friends more than one or two, that but for very shame the pendulum would swing back again to the point from which it started:  and you, kindly Scots, would find yourselves more at home in kindly and homely Scotland, with her simple forms and faith?  So far as my experience has gone, I think that in all matters not of vital moment, it is best that the pendulum should stay at the end