You ask us, reverend sir, whether it is not “a sweet and pleasant thing,” “to tell and hear together of the great things which God has done for our souls.” Doubtless, there are conditions under which such communion may be most “sweet and pleasant.” When they who hold it _agree in mind_ on the high subjects of their conference, it is “sweet and pleasant” to speak mutually of “joys with which no stranger intermeddleth,” and to knit together the human affections, with the bands of that heavenly “charity,” which, springing from one faith and one hope, is yet greater than them both. Nay, when good men _differ from each other_, it is still “sweet and pleasant” to reason together, and prove all things, and whatsoever things are pure, and true and lovely, to think on these things, provided that both parties are conscious of their liability to error, and are anxious to learn as well as to teach: that each confides in the integrity, ingenuousness, and ability of the other; that each applies himself with reasons to the understanding, not with terrors to the will. But such conference is not “sweet and pleasant” where, fallibility being confessed on one side, infallibility is assumed on the other; where one has nothing to learn and everything to teach; where the arguments of an equal are propounded as a message of inspiration; where presumed error is treated as unpardonable guilt, and on the fruits of laborious and truth-loving inquiry, terms of reprobation and menaces of everlasting perdition are unscrupulously poured. You announce your intention to set apart, on our behalf, a day of humiliation and prayer. To supplicate the Eternal Father, as you propose, to turn the heart and faith of others into the likeness of your own may appear to you fitting as an act of prayer; it seems to us extraordinary as an act of humiliation. Permit us to say, that we could join you in that day’s prayer, if, instead of assuming before God what doctrines his Spirit should enforce, you would, with us, implore him to have pity on the ignorance of us all: to take us all by the hand and lead us into the truth and love, though it should be by ways most heretical and strange; to wrest us from the dearest reliances and most assured convictions of our hearts, if they hinder our approach to his great realities. A blessed day would that be for the peace, brotherhood, and piety of this Christian community, if the “humiliation” would lead to a recognition of Christian equality, and the “prayer,” to a recognition of that spiritual God whose love is moral in its character, spiritual, not doctrinal in its conditions, and who accepts from all his children the spirit and the truth of worship.