But very soon new perplexities arose. The people who came to hear me, and who paid the expenses of the new organization, as well as directed its policy, while they progressed sufficiently to renounce Presbyterianism, they were very reluctant to part with Christianity altogether. I could criticise Calvin to my heart's content, but I must not, Christ. The church, or churchianity, certainly deserved to be investigated, and its errors exposed, but Christ and Christianity were too sacred to be handled with equal freedom. My trustees felt that as a liberal _Christian_ organization, there was a great future before us; we would soon become one of the largest and most prosperous religious bodies in the city; but if we "attacked" Christ--they called examining the teachings and character of Christ freely "attacking" Christ--we would be disowned by all respectable members, and lose our standing in the esteem of a hitherto friendly public. And the public was indeed friendly at this stage of our evolution. The press of Philadelphia, as well as of New York City, reported daily, for some time, the doings of the new organization. The majority of the editorials in the daily papers commended the course I had taken in avoiding a "heresy trial," and in resisting the great temptation to resort to shifts and subterfuges to enable me to remain at a lucrative post. In these days * departures from Orthodoxy were rare, and naturally, my case created a great stir. But as I have intimated, the preponderance of criticism and comment was favorable. Encouraging letters from Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Abbott, Prof. David Swing, and other prominent leaders gave the new society an enviable prestige. But my trustees protested that this "good will" of the public, which constituted our best asset, would be lost, and its sympathy turned into antagonism, if I spoke as freely of Christ as I did of Calvin, and subjected the Bible to the same strain of reason that I did the Westminster Catechism. In other words, I was politely made to feel that while it was respectable enough to part with Presbyterianism, it would spell ruin to part also with Christianity. * 1880.