They start up in the form of, mayhap, solitary ideas, chance-derived from some unexpected association, or picked up in conversation or reading; the attention gradually concentrates upon them; auxiliary ideas, in consequence, spring up around them; they assume a logical form--connect themselves, on the one hand, with certain revealed injunctions of wide meaning--lay hold, on the other, on a previously developed devotional spirit or well-trained conscientiousness; and, in the end, if the minds in which they have arisen be influential ones, they alter the aspects and names of religious bodies, and place in a state of insulation and schism churches and congregations. Their rise somewhat resembles that of the waves, as described by Franklin in his paper on the effects of oil in inducing a calm, or in preserving one. 'The first-raised waves,' he says, 'are mere wrinkles; but being continually acted upon by the wind, they are, though the gale does not increase in strength, continually increased in magnitude, rising higher, and extending their bases so as to include in each wave vast masses, and to act with great momentum. The wind, however,' continues the philosopher, 'blowing over water covered with oil, cannot _catch_ upon it so as to raise the first or elementary wrinkles, but slides over it, and leaves it smooth as it finds it; and being thus prevented from producing these first elements of waves, it of course cannot produce the waves themselves.' In applying the illustration just a little further, we would remark, that within a wholesomely-constituted religious Establishment, the influence of the temporalities acts in preventing the rise of new notions, like the smoothing oil. If it does not wholly prevent the formation of the first wrinkles of novel opinion, it at least prevents their heightening into wavelets or seas. If the billows rise within so as to disrupt the framework of the Establishment, and make wreck of its temporalities, it may be fairly premised that they have risen not from any impulsion of the light winds of uncertain doctrine, but, as in the Canton de Vaud and the Church of Scotland, in obedience to the strong ground-swell of sterling principle.