that, and in its days of zeal and warfare, the infidel often becomes
its convert.

Those in the new colony, who turned to the somewhat softer and sweeter
givings out of the Great Teacher, and to whom these qualities made the
predominant elements of his doctrines, were few in numbers, scattered
and weak, while the mass of the immigrants were staunch in the
theology of their old home. The holders of the new ideas not only
suffered from the odium of all new heresies, but their doctrines were
especially odious, as tending to destroy the wholesome sanctions of
fitting punishments, while, like the teachers of all ideas at variance
with the old, they were surrounded by and confounded with the herd of
old scoffers and unbelievers, who always try to ally themselves
with those who, for any reason, doubt or question the dogmas always
rejected by them.

And so it is that the apostles of a new dogma come to be weighted
with whatever of odium may attach to the old rejectors of the old; and
there is always this bond of sympathy between the new heretic and the
old infidel; they are both opposed to the holders of the old faith,
and hence so far are allies.

In Newbury, in that far-off time, a dozen families, perhaps,
respectable for intelligence and morality, were zealous acceptors of
the new ideas; and about these, to their great scandal, gathered the
straggling, rude spirits and doubtful characters that lightly float on
the wave of emigration, to be dropped wherever that subsides.

The organizing power of the new ideas in itself, was not great. Their
spirit was not, and cannot, be aggressive. They consisted in part of