In this system it was premised that divine influence reaches man wholly through the intellectual powers; that conversion is wholly from the force of knowledge and motive offered to the understanding; that the Holy Spirit which once inspired the ancients, never in these years directly reaches man as once it did; that God only penetrates the sinner by the agency of the word recorded in the Old and New Testaments; that it is only through these ancient words that the Eternal Spirit works upon the world's darkness and degradation. To these ideas we may add two others, which are, that there is no divine call to the ministry; that in or through the act of water baptism, in the form of immersion, sins are remitted. Whilst Mr. Badger and his associates agreed with Mr. C. in reverence for the Scriptures, in the free investigation of sacred themes, and in the rejection of human creeds as tests of fellowship, ideas in whose conception and utterance they were many years his seniors and predecessors in the field of theological reform, they took religious experience as their basis, affirmed the free present agency of the Holy Spirit in the world, man's free access to God, and the forgiveness of sins on the conditions of faith and repentance, previous to, and independent of, the outward baptismal rite. Without attempting to enter upon theological investigation, that being foreign to our purpose, we would say, that we seem to deny that God is a sun, we impair the force of his eternal rays, by obliging him to shine forever upon the world exclusively through the atmosphere of ancient Palestine. The sun pours out each day afresh. So is God a sun, radiating for all men, not through the ancient word-medium exclusively, but through _many_ media. His _deeds_ certainly ought to be as expressive of his spirit as his words; and are not creation and providence full of his deeds? God governs the material universe not by ancient but by _present_ agency and action. Let this fact stand as the type of his manner of ruling and blessing in the universe of moral and intellectual being; for it renders no injustice to the past, since the condition of both nature and spirit in this nineteenth century holds its lawful and inviolable connection with all the past eras and epochs that either nature or spirit have known. What is religion worth if it opens no fresh and living communication with Heaven? Is there nothing but a _word_-ligament to unite the living soul with its living God? Is the Holy Spirit a retired agent, no longer mindful of his ancient offices? Are his abilities lost? Are there no fresh inspirations of holiness and truth?