even among that sect which is most lax as to the
dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unitarian of the old school
denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising school.

This is the state of things to which we are arrived. Sisters of
Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be done by a Samaritan;
ministers of the Gospel fling the thunderbolts of the Lord; ignorant
hearers catch and exaggerate the spirit,--boys, girls, and women
shudder as one goes by, perhaps more holy than themselves, who adores
the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same
life-battle, and all this because they have been taught to look upon
him as an enemy of God.

There is a class of religious persons against whom this vehemence has
been especially directed. No one who can read the signs of the times
can help perceiving that we are on the eve of great changes, perhaps a
disruption of the Church of England. Unquestionably there has been a
large secession to the Church of Rome.

Now what has been the position of those who are about to take this
step? They have been taunted with dishonest reception of the wages of
the Church; a watch has been set over them: not a word they uttered in
private, or in public, but was given to the world by some religious
busy-body; there was not a visit which they paid, not a foolish dress
which they adopted, but became the subject of bitter scrutiny and
malevolent gossip. For years the religious press has denounced them
with a vehemence as virulent, but happily more impotent than that of
the Inquisition. There has been an anguish and an inward struggle
little suspected, endured by men who felt themselves outcasts in their
own society, and naturally looked for a home elsewhere.

We congratulate ourselves that the days of persecution are gone by;
but persecution is that which affixes penalties upon _views held_,
instead of upon _life led_. Is persecution _only_ fire and sword? But
suppose a man of sensitive feeling says, The sword is less sharp to me
than the slander: fire is less intolerable than the refusal of
sympathy!

Now let us bring this home; you rejoice that the faggot and the stake
are given up;--_you_ never persecuted--you leave that to the wicked
Church of Rome. Yes, you never burned a human being alive--you never
clapped your hands as the death-shriek proclaimed that the lion's fang
had gone home into the most vital part of the victim's fram