26. But to give all the incidents which proved the occasion of bitter feeling and alienation between me and a number of my brethren would require a book. They were happening almost continually. When once people have ceased to regard each other with love and confidence, they can neither speak nor stir without giving each other offence. And this was the state to which I and several of my brethren had come. Indeed such was the unhappy state of our feelings, that we had ceased to take pleasure in pleasing, and had come almost to take delight in trying one another. Instead of coming as near together as we could, we got as far as possible apart. We came at length to feel a kind of gratification in finding what appeared good reasons for differing from one another. The consequence was, we came to differ from each other so much, that it became impossible for us to work together to any advantage. And there was no one with wisdom and piety sufficient to interpose and heal the breach, or even to prevent it from getting continually wider. The gentleman who had acted as mediator and moderator when my article on _Toleration and Human Creeds_ was arraigned, and who had also brought about the temporary settlement of a more serious dispute at the Conference following, now found the case beyond his powers, and made no further attempts at reconciliation. He saw it necessary, if he would retain his influence in the Body, to become a partizan, instead of a mediator, and he chose the side of my opponents. There were two other men--two of the oldest and ablest of our ministers--and two of the most exemplary Christians in the Body--who saw the danger of the tempest that was raging against me, and who would have been glad to screen me from its violence, but they were afraid to interpose. They loved me and esteemed me, and sympathized with me in many of my views; but to have attempted to save me from the fury of my opponents, would have been to risk their own reputation and position. One of them had already suffered in consequence of the freedom with which he had expressed his views on certain anti-christian doctrines, though he had written with far more caution, and acted with much more prudence, than I had done; and he no doubt felt, that if he could not, without so much difficulty, save himself, it would be vain to attempt to save another, who had spoken and written with so much more freedom, and acted with so much more independence. So the storm was left to rage and spend its fury on my own head. I cannot give an account of all that followed during the last two years which I spent in connection with the Church; it would make my story too long. But things got worse and worse as time passed on.