Preached June 2, 1850.

 ABSOLUTION.

   “And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is
    this which speaketh blasphemies?  Who can forgive sins, but God
    alone?”—­Luke v. 21.

There are questions which having been again and again settled, still from time to time, present themselves for re-solution; errors which having been refuted, and cut up by the roots, re-appear in the next century as fresh and vigorous as ever.  Like the fabled monsters of old, from whose dissevered neck the blood sprung forth and formed fresh heads, multiplied and indestructible; or like the weeds, which, extirpated in one place, sprout forth vigorously in another.

In every such case it may be taken for granted that the root of the matter has not been reached; the error has been exposed, but the truth which lay at the bottom of the error has not been disengaged.  Every error is connected with a truth; the truth being perennial, springs up again as often as circumstances foster it, or call for it, and the seeds of error which lay about the roots spring up again in the form of weeds, as before.

A popular illustration of this may be found in the belief in the appearance of the spirits of the departed.  You may examine the evidence for every such alleged apparition; you may demonstrate the improbability; you may reduce it to an impossibility; still the popular feeling will remain; and there is a lurking superstition even among the enlightened, which in the midst of professions of incredulity, shows itself in a readiness to believe the wildest new tale, if it possess but the semblance of an authentication.  Now two truths lie at the root of this superstition.  The first is the reality of the spirit-world, and the instinctive belief in it.  The second is the fact that there are certain states of health in which the eye creates the objects which it perceives.  The death-blow to such superstition is only struck when we have not only proved that men have been deceived, but shown besides how they came to be deceived; when science has explained the optical delusion, and shown the physiological state in which such apparitions become visible.  Ridicule will not do it.  Disproof will not do it.  So long as men feel that there is a spirit-world, and so long as to some the impression is vivid that they have seen it, you spend your rhetoric in vain.  You must show the truth that lies below the error.

The principle we gain from this is that you cannot overthrow falsehood by negation, but by establishing the antagonistic truth.  The refutation which is to last must be positive, not negative.  It is an endless work to be uprooting weeds:  plant the ground with wholesome vegetation, and then the juices which would have otherwise fed rankness will pour themselves into a more vigorous growth; the dwindled weeds will be easily raked out then.