Why judge ye not, even of yourselves, what is right? JESUS CHRIST.

THIRD EDITION.

BOSTON:

PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & COMPANY.
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON & CO.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by

EDWARD BEECHER,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Stereotyped by
HOBART & ROBBINS,

BOSTON.

Dedication.

TO

MY HONORED AND BELOVED BRETHREN IN CHRIST,

OF EVERY NAME.

I am induced to dedicate this work to you, because its subject is one in which you all have a deep and common interest. You will doubtless observe that I do not address you as a controversialist, aiming to promote the in.terests of any existing theological party, but simply as a Christian brother, endeavoring to remove the causes of paralysis and division from our common Christianity, and thus to promote the interests of the church as a whole. I think also that you will not deny that the issue which I present to you is of sufficient magnitude to deserve and demand your candid and careful consideration. The great conflict of which I speak is, on the whole, the most prominent and important fact in the history of the church. So great a fact must have an adequate cause. Moreover, a cause powerful enough to produce, for so many centuries, such stupendous results, must also be powerful enough seriously to affect the adaptation of Christianity, as a system, to accomplish all that is involved in the great work of the conversion of the world. It is not enough that the existing system can do some good, or even much good; we need a system that shall give us the power intelligently to meet and logically to solve all of the great religious and social problems which we are called on to encounter in the great work of converting the world, and thoroughly reorganizing human society; for this work is not to be done, even in part, by infidel philosophy, but solely by the gospel of Christ, in its purity and power, as applied to all the relations of human society.

Animated by these considerations, I have endeavored to point out, as the cause of the conflict, an element foreign to the system, and which creates constant and powerful tendencies to pernicious errors in philosophy and in doctrine, divides the church, depresses the tone of piety, and thus paralyzes the energies of Christianity, and unfits it to accomplish the great enterprise which it has undertaken.