had repented (!) of having violated his priestly vows in entering the marriage state.

"Belief by faith" sends millions of weary pilgrims to Mecca, and other millions to Treves, for a glimpse of the holy (!) coat.

"Belief by faith" rejects the fact of natural causes for famine, pestilence, earthquakes and tornadoes, and bows in abject fear before some supposed spirit of evil.

"Belief by faith" opens the portals of the "Heavenly Jerusalem" to the murderer, whose last hours are comforted by the assurances of his "spiritual adviser," that eleventhhour repentance is as efficacious as a whole life of uprightness.

Through "belief by faith" the Italian brigand bows in adoration to the Madonna, and straightway plunges his stiletto into the heart of the wayfarer.

The doctrine of "belief by faith" plunged the knife of the Pocassett imitator of Abraham into the heart of his innocent child.

"Belief by faith" in the Romish Church bestows the attribute of infallibility on a man, and "belief by faith" in the Protestant Church bestows the same attribute on a book.

"Belief by faith" in the Bible injunction, “Thou shalt not permit a witch to live," has been instrumental in the persecution, torture and murder of (it is estimated) nine millions of human beings.

"Belief by faith" in the words, I came not to bring peace, but a sword," so stimulated fanaticism, in the days of the Crusades, that (it is estimated) twenty millions of lives were sacrificed.

"Belief by faith" in the teaching of the "gentle Jesus"— "They who will not that I shall rule over them, bring hither and slay before me"-has cost the world, probably, not less than fifty millions of human lives.

"Belief by faith" in the Bible text-“If any are sick, call for the elders, and let them pray over him"-has sacrificed many a life which medical treatment would doubtless have saved.

"Belief by faith" in the examples and teachings of the Bible sustained polygamy in Utah and slavery in the South, and has retarded the progress of temperance.

Through "belief by faith" in the astronomy of Moses the heliocentric system was rejected.

"Belief by faith" in biblical biology, repels the scientific fact of evolution.

Through "belief by faith" we have become heirs to the Puritan bigotry of the seventeenth century, as especially exemplified in our atrocious Sunday laws.

'Belief by faith" lit the fires of Seville, of Smithfield, of Geneva and of Salem, and "carried fagots to the feet of philosophy."

"Belief by faith" induced the absurd utterance of Tertulian -"I believe because it is impossible"—and the equally absurd utterance of Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.—“I believe certain passages in the Bible because I cannot understand them."

The injunction to "believe by faith," had its origin in ignorance, and was nurtured by superstition and fear. It fosters injustice, arrogance and tyranny. It is responsible for more persecution, oppression, cruelty, sorrow and loss of human life, than any other single cause.

Nothing has so antagonized science, retarded civilization, discouraged learning, and repressed kindly feeling.

Faith is uninvestigating, unreasoning, benighting, terrorizing.

John Morley says: "Those who dwell in the tower of ancient faiths, look about them in one constant apprehension, misgiving and wonder; with the hurried, uneasy mien of people living upon earthquakes."

"Faith has burned libraries, closed schools, anathematized science, martyred philosophers, stayed the progress of the human race, wrought incalculable evils to civilization."-(Rev. R. Heber Newton.)

"The greatest curse to a nation, is a form of faith which prevents manly inquiry."-(Inman.)

"The attainment of faith (says the cleric), not the ascertainment of truth, is the highest aim of life. Every great advance in knowledge has involved the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith."-(Huxley.)

"-faith, once wedded fast

To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last,"

-Lalla Rookh.

A thousand religions there are (according to the late Rev. Dr. Hitchcock), embracing all shades of differing faiths-and all equally ignorant. Each is the offspring of environment and education, and neither are capable of the slightest proof. The adherents of each are equally confident that theirs, alone, is the true faith.

“All faiths are, to their own believers, just,

For none believe because they will, but must,

By education most have been misled :

We so believe because we so are bred.

The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the boy imposes on the man."-Dryden.

"Religions are opinions; prove but one
And all men mingle in a common faith."

There is, however, a higher sense than in its reference to religion, in which the word faith may be used. A faith

"not pent within a book,

Or buried in a creed,"

but in all that is good and grand and beautiful and useful in the illimitable universe; faith in truth, in principle, in integrity of character, in human affections, in noble deeds, in the inspired volume of nature, in the vitalizing forces which science is revealing to us in the ever-widening and ceaseless flow of intelligent thought.

"For modes of faith let pious zealots fight:

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."-Pope.

"There lives more faith in honest doubt,

than in half the creeds."-Tennyson.

RELIGION NOT MORALITY.

"Morality may exist independently of religious ideas.”—Guizot. "Religion never yet has purified morality."-Rev. J. W. Chadwick.

THE

HE Christian Church has assumed to regard morality as that which has not existed and cannot exist outside of Christendom. It ignores the fact that long before the Christian era the principle of morality was held in as high esteem as it ever has been during the past nineteen centuries. It is needless to mention the illustrious names of philanthropists, philosophers, poets, and others of ancient times, whose standard of morality was as high as that of any later date. Call Homer, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, immoral? What an insult to intelligence!

It (the Christian Church) impudently prates of "Christian morality"-as though the adherents of other religions (or of no religion) were utterly devoid of moral ideas and unused to moral practices.

The same code of morals exist among the people of every religion, and of those who repudiate what goes by the name of religion, as that which exists among Christians; and as to practice, the Christian Church can justly claim no advantage if, indeed, it cannot be shown that Christianity lags behind those who differ from it in that regard.

With reference to the code of morals of other religions, in substantiation of what I have asserted, I quote from orthodox, Christian authority. Rev. E. F. Burr, D. D., of Lyme, Ct., in his Universal Belief, says: "We find statements or implications of all the main elements of common morality in the Indian religion. . . . The Avesta of the Persians has like testimonies to the common principles of humanity.

The early Egyptian ethics strongly resembled the higher requirements of the Christian religion. Confucius

taught the 'golden rule,' which is reallly the whole scheme of Christian morals in short hand. . There is scarcely

a thing forbidden or commanded in the Bible which is not also forbidden or commanded in the Tripitaka. . . . We find substantially the same moral ideas prevailing among the Greeks and Romans. . . . In the Koran we find ourselves able to piece out a very large code of correct morals, one that follows very closely in the steps of Christianity itself.”

Rev. Minot J. Savage says: "There are moral men in all religions and in no religion."

Rev. N. A. Staples says: “The great mass of the Christian precepts and principles had already been embodied in other writings."

“Ye'll get the best of moral books

'Mang black Gentoos and Pagan Turks,

Or hunters wild on Ponotaxi,

Wha never heard of orthodoxy.”—Burns.

Mrs. Annie Besant, Canon Taylor, Joseph Thompson (the African explorer,) DeHolde, Rev. Mr. Nevins (missionary to China,) Rev. Mr. Macolm (in his Travels,) all have shown that the morality existing among the Buddhists, the Mohammedans, the Chinese, the Burmese, and many others whose religions differ from that of Christianity, is fully equal, and in many respects, superior to that of Christianity.

In Mosheim's Church History of the Fourth Century, he speaks of the gross immoralities existing in the Christian Church, and adds that "to deceive and lie, when religion can be promoted by it, was a virtue.”

Only a few years ago a Presbyterian minister, recently chancellor of the University of New York City, said: "I believe in deceit; I believe in deceit whenever you have a rightful enemy to destroy."

Lecky says of the Byzantine Empire, in which, for nearly eleven centuries, faith in Christianity abounded, that "the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed."

In Samuel Johnson's Oriental Religions we read: “The