Excerpt from The Yale Literary Magazine, Vol. 10: March, 1845 Contempt now took the place of ridicule accompanied with a sort of suppressed indignation, an occasional threat, a wagging Of the head and many mysterious insinuations about Pantheism, Infidelity; while now and then in pulpits few and far between, we hear of some one deigning to demolish it in a parenthesis, with a single blow Of the argumentum ad hominem or reductio ad absurdum. Ridicule and contempt have done a great deal. They are cheap. They do not exact patient attention, rigid analysis, or stringent logic. They tickle conceit and are popular. They have, however, a limit; their progress is commensurate with their success. In the present in stance they soon attained that limit. Transcendentalism advanced slowly perhaps - yet did not even its enemies deny an advancement. Here and there young men found something in it which arrested their usual current of thought, extorted a reperusal, and held or haunted the soul with strange and obstinate questionings. Hear, for example, the language Of one of the most influential clergymen in the Empire city, ' no friend surely Our divinity professors seem to have thought that these Opinions are too much like the comet's hair to have much influ ence Of any kind; but have they not in this instance forgotten that the appropriate title of Satan is the prince Of the power of the air Mi nute and invisible causes are often the most powerful. Changes have been occurring during the last ten or fifteen years, to which it is now very manifest these transcendental tenuities have been in no small measure causal. Tenuous they may be - ao is light - their control is neverthless as positive and commanding as if they stalked along in grim and ghastly platoons among the habitations of men. It cannot much longer be denied, it ought not to have been denied so long, that this subject must be met by fair and manly argument. The charge that it sprung from Germany and questions the infallibility Of Locke and Paley will soon become obsolete. Luther and Knapp were Germans; and the author of the Essay on the Human Understand ing, as well as the Archdeacon of Carlisle, has found dissenters among the honest, bold hearted Presbyterians of Scotland and in the native land of Jonathan Edwards. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.