ces, to the prejudices of his congregation; and when he had ended, there was not one of his new hearers, who did not think the ceremonies less papal and offensive, and more conformant to his or her own notions of devout worship, than they had been led to expect from a service of forms. Truly, Richard found in the divine, during the evening, a most powerful co-operator in his religious schemes. In preaching, Mr. Grant endeavoured to steer a middle course, between the mystical doctrines of those sublimated creeds, which daily involve their professors in the most absurd contradictions, and those fluent rules for moral government, which would reduce the Saviour to a level with the teacher of a school of ethics. Doctrine it was necessary for him to preach, for nothing less would have satisfied the disputatious people who were his listeners, and who would have interpreted silence on his part, into a tacit acknowledgment of either the superficial nature of his creed, or his own inability to defend it. We have already said that, amongst the endless variety of their religious instructors, the settlers were accustomed to hear every denomination urge its own distinctive precepts; and to have found one indifferent to this interesting subject, would have been destructive to his influence. But Mr. Grant so happily blended the universally received opinions of the Christian faith, with the dogmas of his own church, that, although none were entirely exempt from the influence of his reasons, very few took any alarm at the innovation.
"When we consider the great diversity of the human character, influenced as it is by education, by opportunity, and by the physical and moral conditions of the creature, my dear hearers," he earnestly concluded, "it can excite no surprise, that creeds, so very different in their tendencies,
