appendant to their own respectable characters and situation in life. They appear not only to have entered very warmly into all the tenets of the seceding school, but to labour very assiduously for their propagation. They are, it ་ seems, not only followers, but joint leaders in the several departments of the government of the seceding party. Tenderness of heart, warmth of feeling, and liveliness of imagination, form a most interesting part in the composition of an amiable woman; but the qualities which adorn, are also the qualities which mislead. The very attractions which cause them to please, may become snares. If not carefully directed, they give a wrong bias to the character, and a dangerous tendency to the conduct. They lead their possessor more widely astray than is commonly the case with those who are destitute of these pleasing powers. That providential economy which has clearly determined that women were born to share with men the duties of private life, has as clearly demonstrated, that they were not born to divide with them in its public administration. If, then, they were not intended to command armies in war, nor to direct cabinets in peace, to legislate in the senate, or debate at the bar, doubtless they were not intended to be public teachers of religion, to be makers of canons for a new church, nor to invent dogmas to controvert an old one; nor to be professors of proselytism, nor wrangling polemics, nor conductors of controversy, nor settlers of disputesdisputes which will continue to be agitated as long as men have hot heads. and proud hearts; as long as they possess vanity or curiosity, impatience of restraint, or a love of opposition; weariness of sober truths, and a thirst. after the fame to be acquired by their subversion. a Why will women of sense, then, defeat their providential destination? why desert their proper sphere, in which they were intended to benefit, to please, even to shine, at least as stars of the second magnitude? Why fly from their pre scribed orbit? Why roam in useless and eccentric wandering, "And, comet-like, rush lawless through the void," and then having for a season astonished with their false and momentary blaze, fall disregarded and forgotten? These well-meaning ladies would be among the last to use their allotted measure of grace and accomplishment, to any purpose which they believed to be improper; yet they require to be told, that neither should their talents be exerted to the purposes of spiritual seduction; that they should not be em, ployed to disturb the faith, to shake by dispute, or weaken by persuasion, the steadiness of persons who, without their endowments, are perhaps in a safer state, But though the writer cannot hope that these observations will produce any effect on those who are already embarked on this sea, without a shore, and without a bottom-happy would she be, if they might become the means of preserving one inexperienced female from the perils to which novelty, curiosity, and pressing invitation, too easily allure. The sure preservatives from this danger are to cultivate deep humility and self-distrust, to keep clear of the very threshold of innovation, to avoid the first step; for all the subsequent ones are easy. Let her bear in mind, that, once seduced, she may find, that "when she would inherit the blessing, she may be rejected, and find no place of repentance, though she may seek it carefully with tears." 169 ILL EFFECTS OF THE LATE AMONG the evils to which the late secession has contributed, those we are about to mention are of no light nature. It has been the means of exciting a sort of spiritual vanity, of awakening a desire of departing from received opinions, in certain young persons, who may be designated by the name of premature instructors. It has increased the alienation of the lower orders from the church; it has afforded to some who are not favourable to serious piety, a pretence for indiscriminately classing together men of different views, characters, and principles. Among the more respectable, it has stirred up a spirit of de |