But if the
Society is to await this golden opportunity with such exemplary patience
in one case, why not in all? If it is to decline any attempt at converting
the sinner till after God has converted him, will there be any special
necessity for a tract society at all? Will it not be a little
presumptuous, as well as superfluous, to undertake the doing over again of
what He has already done? We fear that the studies of Blackstone, upon
which the gentlemen who argue thus have entered in order to fit themselves
for the legal and constitutional argument of the question, have confused
their minds, and that they are misled by some fancied analogy between a
tract and an action of trover, and conceive that the one, like the other,
cannot be employed till after an actual conversion has taken place.
The resolutions reported by the Special Committee at the annual meeting of
1857, drawn up with great caution and with a sincere desire to make whole
the breach in the Society, have had the usual fate of all attempts to
reconcile incompatibilities by compromise. They express confidence in the
Publishing Committee, and at the same time impliedly condemn them by
recommending them to do precisely what they had all along scrupulously
avoided doing. The result was just what might have been expected.
Pages:
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331