mand because I believe it just, not because it emanates from one source or another."

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"But how do you determine whether a given proposition be true or false, a given command be just or unjust?" "By the reason with which I am endowed, freely developed and conscientiously directed." "We are back where we were. you to do this?"

Does Christianity allow

"No, it does not allow me to do it; but commands me, makes it my duty to do it. Why,' says Jesus to the Jews and through them to all men, why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?' 'If I do not the works of my Father believe me not.' Here is a distinct recognition of a power in man to judge what is and what is not right, and what are and what are not the works of God, together with a call upon us to exercise this power. If we have the power to determine what are the works of God, we of course have the power to determine what is true or false. And this power it is our duty to exercise."

"The church will dissent from your interpretation."

"And I, sir, will in that case dissent from the church. I am no believer in the infallibility of the church. The church has always misinterpreted the authority of truth. She has ever had a profound sentiment of the authoritativeness of truth, that every man is bound to believe and obey the truth; that no man can knowingly disregard the truth and be guiltless. So far she has been right. But on this she has built up a system of ecclesiastical tyranny which it behooves every wise man to protest against. She has first assumed that she has the truth, identified her teachings with the teachings of God, and then claimed for herself the authority which belongs only to truth-to God. Now between the church and absolute truth there may be a distance, and her practice of claiming for herself what belongs of right to truth, is founded on a species of logic I am by no means disposed to admit.

"I admit the absolute authority of God, and of course of truth, since I hold truth to be one with God. Show me the truth, and I own my obligation to submit to it. But I deny that the church has any more authority to interpret truth, and declare the will of God than I have. I make no war upon the church because it has asserted the principle of anthority, for I contend as strongly as she does for that principle. Her error consists in placing that principle

where it does not belong, in claiming it for an individual or a corporation that has no right to it. I deny the legitimacy of all merely human government. God alone is sovereign. No power is legitimate that is not ordained of God. But when the church commands me to believe this or that, she speaks in her own name, and substitutes a human authority for that of God. Here is her grand error. It was this assumption on the part of the Catholic church that provoked the protest of the reformers in the sixteenth century; it is this assumption on the part of all Protestant churches now that leads to the protest of modern infidelity against all religion. And so long as the church continues to make this assumption, I will hold her accountable for all the infidelity which obtains.

"Of all tyrannies ecclesiastical tyranny is the worst, because it penetrates to the soul, and binds the conscience. as well as the body. It makes man a slave within as well as without, and therefore utterly a slave. You may bind my body, you may task the motions of my limbs, but I am still a man if my soul be free, if my thoughts be not curbed, and my conscience itself fettered. In all ages the priesthood have established this tyranny, and they every where struggle with all their might to retain it. Even those of our clergy who fancy themselves the advocates of religious freedom still cling in principle and in fact to this same tyranny. They indeed protest against the authority of Rome, but they set up a written word for which they claim equal authority. They war against the hierarchy, but they claim infallibility for the congregation. The greatest extent to which their love of liberty will carry them, is freedom from all civil restraints in matters of religious worship. But this is no more than Rome always contended for. This was the principle involved in the long struggle between the popes and the emperors. The church claimed for religious freedom, entire freedom from the restraints of the civil power. But she by no means allowed the individual freedom from the restrictions of the ecclesiastical power. Nor do the modern clerical advocates of religious. liberty in our own country. With us each church has its creed, expressed or implied, conformity to which constitutes the Christian character. The Calvinistic clergyman is no more free in the full and enlarged sense of the term than is the Romish priest. In our own country I presume few can be found who would impose civil restrictions on religious

belief; yet there are still fewer, claiming to be religious, who would leave the individual free to form his own creed, and to abide by his own honest convictions of the truth." "Do you then claim for the individual reason the right to interpret the word of God?"

"I do, and more than is commonly implied in the remark. I not only claim for the individual reason the right to interpret the Bible, which is commonly meant, but the whole word of God, whether written or unwritten; that is, the right to decide in all cases whatever, what I am to embrace as truth. But of course I hold that I am to use my reason reasonably. In determining what is truth, I am to survey the whole proposition, and to avail myself of all the aid I can. I am not to confine myself to my own consciousness, to my own experience; but must interrogate the consciousness, the experience of the race, so as to come as near as possible, by means of my individual reason, to the decisions of the universal reason, of which my reason is a fragment. In this inquiry, the Bible, as being the most authentic record of the experience of the race, or of the teachings of the universal reason, or what is the same thing, the revelations of God, becomes to me of the greatest possible value, and my surest guide."

"I can only say that, though I object nothing to your doctrine, I apprehend the Christian world will no more own you than it would me."

"As to that I shall not trouble myself. I believe I see very clearly the signs of the times. Men are not precisely what they were. Knowledge is no longer the exclusive property of the clergy. The laity have been to school, and are going to school; and it is shrewdly suspected by some that there is no especial virtue in the imposition of hands,

gown and band, to enable one to see and know the truth. It is beginning to be believed that humanity in all its integrity, is in every member of the race, that each member therefore has the right and the power to form his own creed. The church may war against this new state of things, but she will by so doing only hasten the day of her dissolution. The human race is already escaping from her dominion. It demands a reason, and she must give it, or be discarded. She must recognize the authority of pure reason in matters of religion as well as natural science, or she will go the way of all the earth. I say this in no Titanic spirit, but with a deep respect for the church, and an earnest wishi for her future glory."

CHAPTER XVIII.-THE PREACHER.

The day following the conversation I have just related, was Sunday, and Mr. Howard for the first time invited me to acompany him to his meeting. He remarked that his minister, though pretty orthodox in the main, was a little peculiar, and perhaps I should find myself interested, if not edified. Years had elapsed since I had entered a place of religious worship, and though I felt no great desire on my part to hear a sermon, yet as I thought I might please Mr. Howard by going, I accepted his invitation.

The place of the meeting was a public hall capable of holding some eight or nine hundred persons, and I found it well filled with a plain, sensible-looking congregation, whose earnest countenances indicated that they were there not because it was a place of fashionable resort, but because they were serious worshippers and honest inquirers after truth. A single glance told you that they were bold, earnest minds, who could look truth steadily in the face, let her assume what shape she might.

The preacher, a Mr. Morton, was a tall, well-proportioned man, with something a little rustic in his appearance, indicating that his life had not been spent in the circles of the gay and the fashionable. Though far from being handsome, his features were striking and impressed themselves indeli bly upon the memory. His dark complexion, and small, restless black eye bespoke an active and also an irritable disposition, and assured you that he might say some bitter things. His head was large, and his brow elevated and expanded. His face bore the marks of past struggle, whether with passion, the world, or sorrow, it was not easy to say. He was apparently under forty years of age, but you felt that he was a man who could speak from experience, that he was in fact no ordinary man, but one who had a biography, if you could only get at it. There was something almost repulsive about him, and yet you were drawn insensibly towards him.

On commencing his discourse he seemed not exactly at his ease, and his address was hurried, and ungraceful. His voice, too, though deep-toned, grated harshly on the ear, and produced a most unfavorable impression. But there was an air of earnestness about him, an evidence of intellectual vigor, and of moral honesty, which arrested your attention; while the novelty of his views and the boldness of his language served to enchain it till he closed. His dis

course was to me a most singular production. I had never heard such a sermon before; and I confess I listened to it with the deepest interest. As a copy of it subsequently came into my hands, I will here give it word for word as he delivered it, although I am aware that it can hardly make the same impression upon my readers that it did upon me. But to the sermon.

But I certify you, brethren, that the Gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, nor was I taught it but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.-GAL. i. 11, 12.

The declaration of Paul in these words is worthy of grave consideration. There is more in it than at first sight meets the eye.

Paul, you are aware, had much trouble with his brother believers. Many, a large portion of the Jewish, or as we should say to-day, orthodox believers in Christianity, looked upon him as unsound in the faith, and as one who might do mischief. They no doubt held him to be honest, probably admired his zeal, and did homage to the earnestness and singleness of purpose with which he gave himself up to the great work of diffusing Christianity as he understood it; but then they feared that his boldness, his rashness, the freedom of his speculations, might compromit the Gospel, and secure its enemies a triumph. Hence wherever he went, they followed him, scattering doubts as to his orthodoxy, warning the people not to listen to him, and laboring to secure the adoption of certain notions, or the observance of certain rites or ceremonies which he declared to be unessential or inconsistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It was to defend himself from the charges preferred by these orthodox opponents of his, to rebuke them for their folly or ignorance, and to recall his Galatian brethren to the simplicity, truth, and freedom of the Gospel that he wrote this epistle, from which I have taken my text; and he alleges as his defence the fact that the Gospel he was preaching, he did not receive from men, nor was he taught it by men, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Paul had come to Christianity through the free action of his own mind, and had embraced it because convinced of its truth. He had opposed it, but not on account of that for which others embraced it, but on account of something which they probably did not see.

The early believers in Christianity were Jews. But in believing Christianity they did not consider themselves as