ries, and in children's tales.

It is necessary, in order that my plea should be understood, that I
should explain what I mean by Christianity; and in the very attempt at
this explanation there will, I think, be found strong illustration of
the value of unbelief. Christianity in practice may be gathered from
its more ancient forms, represented by the Roman Catholic and the Greek
Churches, or from the various churches which have grown up in the last
few centuries. Each of these churches calls itself Christian. Some
of them deny the right of the others to use the word Christian. Some
Christian churches treat, or have treated, other Christian churches
as heretics or unbelievers. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants in
Great Britain and Ireland have in turn been terribly cruel one to
the other; and the ferocious laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, enacted by the English Protestants against English and Irish
Papists, are a disgrace to civilisation. These penal laws, enduring
longest in Ireland, still bear fruit in much of the political mischief
and agrarian crime of to-day. It is only the tolerant indifference of
scepticism that, one after the other, has repealed most of the laws
directed by the Established Christian Church against Papists and
Dissenters, and also against Jews and heretics. Church of England
clergymen have in the past gone to great lengths in denouncing
nonconformity; and even in the present day an effective sample of
such denunciatory bigotry may be found in a sort of orthodox catechism
written by the Rev. F. A. Gace, of Great Barling, Essex, the popularity
of which is vouched by the fact that it has gone through ten editions.
This catechism for little children teaches that "Dissent is a great
sin", and that Dissenters "worship God according to their own evil
and corrupt imaginations, and not according to his revealed will, and
therefore their worship is idolatrous". Church of England Christians
and Dissenting Christians, when fraternising amongst themselves, often
publicly draw the line at Unitarians, and positively deny that these
have any sort of right to call themselves Christians.

In the first half of the seventeenth century Quakers were flogged and
imprisoned in England as blasphemers; and the early Christian settlers
in New England, escaping from the persecution of Old World Christians,
showed scant mercy to the followers of Fox and Penn.

It is customary, in controversy, for thos