CHAPTER V.
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE.
[Illustration] In consequence of the unexampled religious freedom possessed in this country, for which it is happily distinguished above all other countries on the face of the earth, there necessarily results a vast variety of religious sentiment and action.

We can not enjoy the blessings without the inconveniences of freedom.

Where every man is allowed to believe as he pleases, some will, undoubtedly, believe wrong, and others will be divided, by embracing views of a subject which are different, though perhaps equally consistent with truth.

Hence we have among us every shade and every variety of religious opinion, and, in many cases, contention and strife, resulting from hopeless efforts to produce uniformity.
A stranger who should come among us would suppose, from the tone of our religious journals, and from the general aspect of society on the subject of religion, that the whole community was divided into a thousand contending sects, who hold nothing in common, and whose sole objects are the annoyance and destruction of each other.

But if we leave out of view some hundreds, or, if you please, some thousands of theological controversialists who manage the public discussions, and say and do all that really comes before the public on this subject, it will be found that there is vastly more religious truth admitted by common consent among the people of New England than is generally supposed.