In my opinion there is no real need for the morbid anxiety that now prevails in certain quarters, and surely no serious alarm should be felt for the perpetuity and stability of truth. Truth is truth, and all the bad captains that ever sailed that bark, and all the bad navigators that ever misdirected its course, have never been able to run it on the lee shore, or bring it to final shipwreck, and never can; for over and above all human devices and guidings there is a divine hand that upholds and shields that which, next to his Infinite Self, is the most precious blessing yet conferred upon the human mind. Let us remember that the heresies of the hour are not of the "damnable sort" which, as Peter declared, deny the Lord who bought us; neither are they mixed with such immoralities as Paul condemns in his letter to the Galatians. And if we may believe that the words of that same apostle have any pertinency in our times, then, when he declares that heresies or schisms must arise among us "that they which are proved may be made manifest," we may confidently expect that out of the present discussions and the "jangling of sweet notes out of tune" some broader thought and some nobler conception of divine teachings, revealed to us in Holy Scripture, will assuredly come to the church and to the world. I think that the leaders who are solicitous for the ark of God ought to try to characterize the opinions which have given rise, in these latter days, to threatened trials for heterodoxy. It is so easy to say that a man who differs from ourselves is not orthodox, and to avoid an actual and exact statement of what we mean; when in fact we deal unjustly with him, and produce a wrong impression on the community at large. Let us notice the three distinctive and discriminating marks of so-called heresy in evangelical churches, and I think you will be persuaded that it is unwise for us to be alarmists, and imprudent "to breathe out threatenings and slaughters."