collect from these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone
past. The earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of the general
tendency in all dangers to come round by successive and reiterated shocks--
"The earthquake is not satisfied at once."
All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers; they intermit,
only as the revolving lamps of a lighthouse are periodically eclipsed. The
General Assembly of 1843, when closing her gates upon the Seceders, shut
_in_, perhaps, more of the infected than at that time she succeeded in
shutting _out_. As respected the opinion of the world outside, it seemed
advisable to shut out the least number possible; for in proportion to the
number of the Seceders, was the danger that they should carry with them an
authentic impression in their favour. On the other hand, as respected a
greater danger, (the danger from internal contagion,) it seemed advisable
that the church should have shut out (if she could) very many of those who,
for the present, adhered to her. The broader the separation, and the more
absolute, between the church and the secession, so much the less anxiety
there would have survived lest the rent should spread. That the anxiety in
this respect is not visionary, the reader may satisfy himself by looking
over a remarkable pamphlet, which professes by its title to separate the
_wheat from the chaff_. By the "wheat," in the view of this writer, is
meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their recusant policy up to
the practical result of secession. All who stopped short of that
consummation, (on whatever plea,) are the "chaff." The writer is something
of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but he is consistent with
regard to his own principles, and so elaborately careful in his details as
to extort admiration of his energy and of his patience in research.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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