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CONTAINING THE LAST PART OF THE WRITINGS ON CHRISTIANITY AND
HEATHENISM IN POLITICS AND IN SOCIETY.

DETROIT:

THORNDIKE NOURSE, PUBLISHER.

8908
B6

1884

V.13

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CONVERSATIONS ON LIBERALISM AND THE

CHURCH.

PREFACE.

THIS little volume must speak for itself. The Conversations turn on questions of the day and the hour, and taken as a whole they form a passable defence of the church against the objections urged in the name of liberalism and progress, or so-called modern civilization. They are not purely imaginary, but such as I have really had time and again with the enemies of the church, who object to her principally on political and social grounds.

The form of the work has been adopted for my own convenience and that of the reader, and I hope will not be found objectionable. The doctrine is, I believe, rigidly orthodox. I have sought neither to offend the world nor to conciliate it. I do not believe in making concessions of what is not mine to concede. I have explained the teachings of the church where they conflict with the spirit of the age, but I have not sought to conform them to that spirit. The church was instituted by our Lord to govern the world according to the divine reason and will, not to be governed by it. These Conversations are respectfully dedicated to all who have or seek after Christian Truth, by

ELIZABETH, N. J., April, 1869.

THE AUTHOR..

I. DURING the intense heat of the summer days of 1868, I was ordered by my physicians to try the virtues of a newlydiscovered mineral spring, in a distant state, which was beginning to acquire considerable reputation. The number of visitors was not large, for it had not yet become a fashionable watering-place, and few, except such as were really in pursuit of health, or at least desirous of recruiting their exhausted energies, visited it. They were chiefly overworked lawyers, merchants, traders, editors, and ministers of religion, who required relaxation from labor and rest, with freedom from their ordinary cares and anxieties.

I belonged to none of those classes. I had no profession, no occupation, and, with a moderate but competent estate

VOL. XIII-1

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