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 ment in the right direction. The praising as the cursing psalms belong alike to the religious past.

Although opposed to gross forms of religious excitement, Reed was ready to acknowledge that the masses might not be reached by the decorous quietude of religious ministration, suited to more refined and educated life; and thus he freely recognized the valuable co-operative aid of active and zealous non-conformity with the efforts of his own Church in the religious leavening of the people. But he was opposed to that extravagance that might be called the scare system, in popular preaching and conversion efforts. No doubt some few natures were aroused—scared, so to say—into better ways, but usually at the serious cost of an unhealthy and alienating effect upon all the rest. Suppose, for example, some great school where the master's system was to threaten the children indiscriminately all round, to the effect that if the naturally vicious little "varmints," as he held them all to be, did not do all he ordered them, and believe all he told them, down they should drop into some place of torment. No doubt some few specially unruly spirits might be cowed into good conduct, but what, on the other hand, would be the moral effect upon the whole school? Then, again, even if revivals and conversions in the scare way had at times such good practical results, we must remember that this sensational feature does not belong to any one religion in particular, but is the indiscriminate heritage even of opposing creeds. There is, in short, always a