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Quakers the best practical Theologians.

are alive to the importance of feeding the body of their very enemy. Quakers are the only practical theologians we have. Unlike the Ecclesiastics, they live the doctrine of the Incarnation, which implies that as a human body was joined to the Godhead of Christ in one person, out of honour to Him for having taken our nature, we should not torture the body by starving it, nor the mind by annoying it. These oppose tyranny, harshness, and war. The persecuted Ritualists ought, therefore, to make Quakers of the Church Association party. I believe that the doctrine of the Incarnation, or what is implied in it, is the foundation of all our good and humane principles. It is the cause of our not being cruel to animals.

Heathenism, all errors of Popery, and all wrong teaching, oppose the doctrine of the Trinity, or what it contains. Praying to saints, or worshipping them, is setting up little gods instead of having but one God. Transubstantiation opposes it, for there is but one Christ, and He had but one body, which He took in the womb of the virgin of her substance; whereas the priest teaches that there are as many Christs as pieces of his altar bread. Similarly the doctrine of the Trinity proves the falsehood of all wrong teaching, wherever found. Ritualists and Romanists will be surprised to hear that they deny the doctrine of the Trinity, as they teach the very things which it opposes. The doctrine of the Trinity is a summary of all that is contained in the Bible. The Church Catechism overlooks all the points of the Apostles' Creed, as they are all implied in what the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have done for us.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Poor clergymen proved to have neither religion nor goodness-Going to a Bishop's palace the first step towards getting £200 a year— Poor vicars the least artful and crafty of all men, by merely asking a livelihood, or offering to work for it-The Popish Irish system of paying priests, and its effects on emigration, landlordism, and Irish poverty-Putting a passport in a dead man's mouth to take him to St. Peter.

OVERTY causes a vicar to be no clergyman at all, for a clergyman means a man of goodness and of religion, and, to speak plainly, neither of these can be found over an empty stomach. It is goodness to find food to nourish the body, to enable a man to work for God; and it is also goodness to feed a person's wife and children in order to obey God's commandment to "love his neighbour as himself." It is religion to shew respect and veneration toward a Bishop, and to obey his homily and admonition, even when he directs the vicar to say, in the vicar's own house, the Lord's prayer, especially "Give us this day our daily," and when he tells him not to say it in any church where it would procure a guinea. The Bishop's stopping the goodness of getting food for the wife and children, by requiring the observance of the religion toward himself and toward his godly admonition, proves that goodness and religion are separate and distinct things.

But most people think that goodness and religion

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Religion different from goodness.

are the same thing. Now the Popish priests have plenty of religion, and at the very time they are carrying it on, they pour out abuse or curses on the altar against landlords and others, suggesting, in their mysterious language, that they should be shot. In fact, all this is a part of their religion: and it is strange goodness to curse a man with bell, book, and candle light, or to leave him to be shot, or to burn him alive in the religious inquisition-fire.

A religious man, or the person who observes a religious system, or the rights and ceremonies of a church, is not necessarily good; and Quakers, who dislike religious forms, are good living people. And rough and honest John Bull, who makes no pretence to be religious, is a fine fellow for goodness. Sometimes those are the best men for kindness who never enter a place of worship; whereas priests and ministers are often a match for the very devil for badness of every sort.

As God requires goodness quite as much as observing religious forms, a poor vicar ought to be as good at feeding his wife and children, when his money is denied him by his parishioners and church authorities, as he is expected to be in attending to religious ceremonies. Parishioners want a poor vicar to be a bad man, by requiring him not to find a livelihood by preaching to those others who are so good as to employ, pay, and feed him. The religion which his own people want him to have is paying them homage, reverence, and some sort of worship. This is requiring him to omit welldoing, and to carry on evil-doing.

An invitation which I got now by letter to my

Going to a Bishop's Palace lucky.

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bishop's palace made a new man of me; and it laid the foundation stone of a building which has put more. than £100 a year at the top of it for endowing me, and for dropping down to all future vicars of my church. At the palace my good bishop told me to start an endowment fund for increasing my small stipend, and that he would head the list with £50. I obeyed this really "godly admonition," and so I have increased the permanent stipend to £200 a year. This was a lucky visit. (COPY OF LETTER.)

The Palace, Norwich,

Dec. 16th, 1875.

My Dear Sir, It is rather difficult to reply to your letters, as you write a second before you have received my answer to your first.

I think it will be better for you to come and see me, and I will ask you to do so on Wednesday, 22nd.

If Mrs. O'Malley will accompany you, it will give Mrs. Pelham and myself much pleasure if you will both dine and sleep here that night.

You will allow me to pay your travelling expenses, and can tell me what they are when you come.

Your faithful Servant,

JOHN T. NORWICH.

The Rev. B. O'Malley. All men, except poor clergymen of the Church of England, pursue some artful and crafty way of getting on in the world. Even the church dignitaries use palaver and grant favours in order to get better places. Poor vicars are honest enough to do no more than to get enough food by preaching in other churches, when they do not get their maintenance for working in their own church.

The Popish priests use the confessional as a secret

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The motives for Irish agitation.

means to stir up the wild Irish to give them money. In Ireland the Popish priests have nothing to live upon but what the people give them. Consequently the priests will get more money from tenants, who are almost all priest-ridden, by paying little or no rent at all to the landlord. As the priests get the money from the people, the more heads the more money; and the greater the number of emigrants the less people or money will be left in old Ireland for paying the priests for baptisms, marriages, and burials. The priests get money for saying masses for the dead, and, perhaps, the greater the number of close-fisted landlords that are shot, the more money will be made on their carcase or soul. It is no easy task to get such characters out of the fire of purgatory for having starved priests and people. It is kind of the priests to say masses for such murdered landlords for any sum of money, since it is believed that they have murdered poor tenants by starving them to death.

It really looks as if Jesuits, priests, and aspiring leaders, were at the bottom of every Irish agitation, since all demands made upon the English, or upon landlords, are for the purpose of benefiting still more those who are fairly well-off already, or those in a good position. Lands, grants of money, and seats in Parliament, or Home Rule, are asked for such people, as if to benefit the priests, or to raise themselves still higher. Nothing seems to be demanded for the labourers and the masses in the towns, or those who form the majority of the Irish, as if the priests could not get much out of them. It is more reasonable to advocate public works, such as making roads, constructing

Nothing seems