And what is the result of thus substituting for justification by faith, justification by belief in opinions, and by processes of feeling? Look at the churches where this has been carried farthest, and see the result. Religion becomes gloomy, anxious, and austere; it ceases to breathe cheerfulness and joy around; the gentler graces die before it; fear treads fast in the footsteps of hope; a stiff formality introduces cant in the place of what is natural and artless; the heart is stretched on a rack of self-torturing doubts and anxieties. The biographies and private journals of many eminent saints show us how little happiness they had in their religion,—how they were tortured by spiritual doubts, perplexities, and anxieties. The reason is, that they rely on their _own_ feelings, instead of relying on Christ. And with the reliance placed on theory and opinion vanishes the union of the Church. There are five sects in this country, all holding to the Assembly’s Catechism—a large and minute compendium of opinions,—and yet which often do not allow each other to commune at the Lord’s table. The New School Presbyterians might permit the others to commune with _them_, but are themselves excluded. The Old School Presbyterians would commune with all but the New, but are not permitted. Nay, the Associate Reformed, the Covenanters, and the Seceders carry it so far as to discipline and excommunicate their members for what is called _occasional hearing_; i.e., attending worship at other churches than their own. There was in the State of Indiana an Old School preacher, and president of a college, who refused to allow a Unitarian to give a literary address which the students had asked him to give, and which he had gone to deliver, and, in defending himself for this, called him a “public propagator of infidelity;” and within a mile or two of his college there was a society of Seceders, or Covenanters, holding, like himself, the Assembly’s Confession, who would excommunicate any of their members who should go to hear him preach. There is, then, a tendency among the Orthodox to rely on their own opinion and their own feelings, rather than on Jesus Christ. § 10. Errors of Liberal Christians.