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 cling to them with a fierce and feverish dogmatism, the extreme anxiety which they sometimes betray "to preserve the husks of dead men's thoughts," lest they should incur the suspicion of heresy, only reveals a secret consciousness on their part that the former faith has leaked, or is fast leaking, out of its symbols. We know that the terminologies of religion usually become vague and quite emptied of their meaning, long before they fall into complete desuetude. As Rev. E. H. Sears justly remarks:

"It is a fact very familiar to the historian of opinions, that an old system of theology may pass clean away, and a very different one take its place, without the least change in the old creeds and nomenclatures, just as the Roman republic passed into the empire, and liberty changed into despotism, without the least change in the form of government."

And so the churches of Christendom may change—are rapidly changing—in their spirit and principles, without any material change in their theological nomenclatures. These latter belong rather to the external, and do not touch the internal—the real heart and living thought of the churches of to-day—no, nor hinder the influx into them of the new light and life nearly so much as many imagine. Even while I am writing, a letter under date of June 19th, inst., comes to me from an