Mind, however, has not stood still in this matter. It has moved, and that in the right direction. We may note a progress from age to age, in coming to a just estimate of life. Start not at the use of terms, rendered suspicious by the extravagancies of which they have been made the vehicle. But we must not reject ideas great, just, or new, because of the distortions and caricatures of little minds. If one idea occupies the mind all them more for being great and just, it will be likely to overmaster that mind, so as not to be produced in its fair proportions, or rightly applied. So fare they, with whom the one idea is, the progress of society--the growth of thought. The Mississippi in its progress throws froth and scum on its surface, more conspicuous than the under-running current. So radical folly and transcendental nonsense is obtruded on the sight, from the sympathy of little minds with the deeper current of thought. To gauge the progress of mind from those who are most noisy on the matter, would be, like taking the direction and rapidity of the Mississippi, from the froth, which the wind blows hither and thither over its surface. "Let us go on to perfection"--"Forgetting the things behind, and pressing onward to the things before." Such language describes distinctively the American character, and the spirit of Christianity. Only, where is perfection? What are the things before? If, as a people, we do fully take these expressions in their author's sense, we may hope there is one element of agreement, betokening good for the future. It is encouraging, that the two rival systems, most boldly promising to lead to perfection, both had their birth under political and mental bondage. So evidently with Romanism, whether under its proper form and name, or refined and disguised after the modern fashion. And the same is true of the baptized infidelity imported from Germany. The German mind is cramped and diseased by the bands which confine it. It is not allowed to speculate freely on politics, and the many questions most nearly touching present interests. Therefore, on the records and on the doctrines which pertain to eternal interests, it falls with an insane avidity for innovation, and runs into licentiousness a liberty no where else enjoyed. Hence the levity, in dealing with things sacred, in Germany often found in minds of the first and second orders, here is taken up by those to the third and fourth--the copyists and imitators; nay, by the buffoons who figure at the farces of mock philanthropy. Now, though every folly must find minds whose caliber it fits, we may hope the genuine American mind will not be extensively beguiled by either of the misbegotten offspring of Europe's mental servitude.