If it would make the Bishop unhappy to believe that all Christians must be lost who cannot frame their lips to utter the precise creeds which the Bishop can utter-though they have had all the advantages of a Christian training-should it not make Christians more unhappy to believe-as they logically must-that none can be saved who, by reason of mental constitution, ignorance, or religious bias, find themselves conscientiously unable to believe in Christ's Divinity or the saving efficacy of the Atonement? They may be willing to believe that all Christians will be saved, but can they be indifferent to the fate of non-Christians: seeing that the latter stand toward the former as three to one in point of numbers? Many of the master-minds and leading thinkers of the age are men whom Christians denounce as "infidels," "heretics," "atheists," &c. Are such men and women as Comte, Carlyle, Goethe, Emerson, Humboldt, J. S. Mill, Tyndall, Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Geo. Elliott, Greg, Arnold, Harriet Martineau, and others, to be admitted to salvation? If, however, such men as the Bishop of Manchester are prepared to go the length of admitting to salvation even those who do not rank themselves under any of the orthodox creeds, there would then be no advantage in retaining any mere doctrinal creed at all. Would it not be better at once to throw down all such barriers between man and man as the doctrines of modern Christianity, and preach salvation through love of God and a pure life in the light of Christ's teachings? It is difficult to see how the doctrines of Baptism or the Lord's Supper, or Original Sin* or Election, as efficacious to our salvation, can be abandoned, whilst others, like the Atonement and Divinity, are retained; and yet, there is as little autho

* Whilst these pages are passing through the press, I see another speech of the Bishop of Manchester (February, 1877), wherein he said that "he agreed with Bishop Butler, that on the whole human nature was favourable to virtue rather than to vice; and he thought when they put a better view before the people they did not generally choose the worst."

T

rity in the teachings of Christ for the one as there is for the other.

I have illustrated the narrowness and bigotry which characterise some Churchmen in their behaviour towards Dissenters. Not less intolerant-so far as it dares venture -is the attitude of the Church of Rome in England towards those who differ from its special interpretation of the Religion of Jesus. Here is a specimen of the Christian sentiments of Catholics towards Protestants, culled from the Tablet of January 27, 1877:—

"Considering the end of man and the purpose of civil society, murder and robbery are light crimes, and the spread of epidemic diseases a misfortune of no consequence, in comparison with the crime which Luther and Calvin perpetrated when they began their revolt from the Church."

The unwise zeal of a few Protestants during some recent mission service of the Church of England, in January, 1877, in soliciting Roman Catholics to attend their services, called forth a long letter from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford to all his priests, "On the duty of Catholics towards the Anglican Movement," from which I make the following significant extracts :—

"While, however, we gladly hear that our non-Catholic neighbours are seeking, according to their light, for the grace of repentance and the way of salvation, it may be necessary to speak a word or two of warning to some of our own flock. As you are probably aware, rooms in many of the mills and factories are being set apart for special services, and in many cases the Catholic operatives have been invited to attend: while clergymen also, and their agents, have visited even the private houses of Catholics in different parts of Manchester to solicit their attendance in Protestant churches. But the children of the light and of the day' (1 Thess. v.) know full well that it would be sinful in them to take part in any non-Catholic services. Never from the beginning of the world has it been lawful for the members of the true Church to participate in the worship of any other religion. Warn, then, your people against the impious and fatal spirit of liberalism, which maintains that all religions are equally good, and that God has committed the gratuitous and divine gift of man's salvation to each and every sect indifferently. It may be

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well to bring under your observation the two following passages, which occur in an allocution and an encyclical addressed by the Sovereign Pontiff to the Bishops. 'It is part of our apostolical duty to excite your episcopal care and vigilance to use every effort to eject from the minds of men the opinion, as impious as it is dangerous, that the way of eternal salvation can be found in any religion. Use all diligence and learning to show to the people committed to your care that the doctrines of the Catholic faith are in no wise opposed to divine mercy and justice. We must hold as of faith that out of the Apostolic Roman Church that no one can be saved, that she is the only ark of salvation, and that whosoever has not entered within the ark shall perish in the deluge; on the other hand, it must be equally held as certain that they who are in ignorance of the true religion, if this ignorance be invincible, are not therefore condemned as guilty in the eyes of God.'

"Again, in the encyclical entitled 'Quanto Conficiamur,' the Holy Father thus addresses the bishops upon the same subject:'We must here again, dear sons and venerable brethren, mention and reprove that most serious error, which is unhappily held by some Catholics, that people living in errors and out of the true faith and Catholic unity can attain eternal life. This is altogether opposed to Catholic doctrine. But it is also a well

known Catholic dogma that no one outside of the Catholic Church can be saved, and that those who contumaciously rebel against the authority and definitions of the same Church, and that those who are obstinately separated from the unity of the Church and from the successor of St. Peter, the Roman Pontiff, to whom "the custody of the vine was committed by the Saviour" (Council of Chalced.), cannot obtain eternal salvation."

Although in these encyclical letters there are saving clauses which appear to modify the intolerant harshness of these doctrines of the Romish Church in favour of those who are “in invincible ignorance of our most holy religion," yet the concluding paragraph of the above extract clearly conveys no uncertain intimation of the awful future which this infallible Church considers all good Protestants are preparing for themselves. It is to be hoped that there will, amongst Catholics, continue to be a great deal of "that impious and fatal spirit of liberalism," which this benighted exponent of the Religion of Jesus so much deplores. Long may it flourish and increase! If our Catholic and Protestant fellow-Christians seriously regarded

each other in the light which these narrow-minded, uncharitable teachers would have them do, the result would be to spread everywhere hatred and ill-will, in place or that "peace on earth and good-will toward men" which they ought to preach. The responsibility which must rest with men who-calling themselves ministers of Christ-implant such unchristian feelings in the breasts of their followers is an awful one indeed, and one which, it is to be hoped, they have well considered.

Since the want of charity, which modern Christians display one towards another, is so great, we need not be surprised to find that towards unbelievers there is a still greater display of hatred and ill-feeling.

These are the charitable and "Christian" sentiments of the Church Herald in its obituary notice of the late Mr. John Stuart Mill, in May, 1873:—

"Mr. J. Stuart Mill, who has just gone to his account, would have been a remarkable writer of English if his innate self-consciousness and abounding self-confidence had not made him a notorious literary prig. His 'philosophy,' so called, was thoroughly anti-Christian; his sentiments daringly mischievous and outrageously wild. As a member of Parliament he was a signal failure, and his insolence to and contempt for the great Conservative party was well known. His death is no loss to anybody, for he was a rank but amiable infidel, and a most dangerous person. The sooner those 'lights of thought' who agree with him go to the same place, the better will it be for both Church and State. We can well spare the whole crew of them, and shall hear of their departure, whether one by one or in a body, with calm satisfaction.'

I pointed out, in my introductory remarks to Part II. of this work, one significant fact, from which all thinking men can draw but one conclusion, and which is patent to every impartial critic of modern Christianity—namely, that all the various sects differ in their interpretation of Christ's teachings, and yet all claim to be exclusively right! I illustrated this fact by extracts from the various creeds of the Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths, and I

have now given the reader a few practical illustrations of the same phenomenon as it crops up in the newspapers. We have seen the Rev. A. H. Mackonochie, in the Church of England, telling us that the Church of England is "the Church of Christ to this country, and it is so completely and absolutely the Church of Christ to us, that, so long as it exists, it is impossible for any other religious body whatever to be the Church of Christ to this nation." We have also the Dean of Manchester urging his hearers "to deny the authority of all Nonconformist teachers to be apostles sent from God;" and we see also Dean Goulbourn protesting against the Christianity of Dean Stanley, because "he holds out the hand of fellowship to all religionists indifferently," and he denounces the "weak desire to make religion (what Bible religion never was and never can be) acceptable to all men, and the Church universally comprehensive." Then, again, we have the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford, in one part of his letter to the priests of his diocese, telling them to "look over the extent of this vast city and its suburbs—a hundred teachers are pointing in opposite directions. In one street a voice proclaims, 'Lo! here is Christ;' in another, 'Lo! he is here."" After this apt illustration of the doubt and uncertainty which prevails amongst the various divisions of modern Christians, he proceeds, like Dean Goulbourn, to denounce "the impious and fatal liberalism which maintains that all religions are equally good," and concludes by telling everybody that no one outside the Catholic Church can be saved." Lastly, to complete the picture of bigotry and intolerance, we have the Church Herald declaring "that rank but amiable infidel, and most dangerous person," John Stuart Mill, to have been "thoroughly anti-Christian" in his teachings, and plainly hinting that he has gone to hell!

The only inference which intelligent laymen will draw, from this mass of confusion and contradiction, is, that none of these professed exponents of the Salvation of