me other disease. Their wants seem
to be few and easily supplied. Health and hominy are the staples of
spiritual food with them at the present. The time was when, as a
society, they wished to wear some of the main elements of the Christian
religion, such as belief in the existence of God; the existence of the
church of God, and belief in the resurrection of Christ, and through him
the resurrection of all men; but they have long ere this thrown aside
all these. In the beginning of their history they were noted, as our
author says, for their disposition to promptly "controvert the current
doctrines of the Christian world," and "show their dissent from all
sects and parties, and their aversion to the clergy, and to Christian
ministers of all denominations." This trait of character they still
retain, regardless of the advance of Christians from Calvinistic errors.
This looks like they were determined on hating the profession of
Christianity, regardless of its character. _Such_ is their chronic
disease.

They talk no more of worshiping the eternal God, nor of obeying the
commands of Jesus. But it is just to say of their most noted leaders
that they confess that the _Christ life_ was, and is, the most exalted
and praiseworthy life of all the ages. And, while this life remains to
challenge the world to imitation, we Christians shall rejoice, believing
in Christ and realizing that our foundation stands sure and secure. In
their origin they built a fine church house, but now they go to China
and borrow "Josh house," as an odius epithet for church house,
forgetting that their China brethren are simply clinging to their own
old philosophy of nature and her lessons, without the religion of the
Bible; and, also, forgetting that they, themselves, allow that all that
is, is right, being, from natural selection, simply the survival of the
fittest. Eight years more and a century will have passed since free
thought started out in Parliament Court Chapel, and from present
indications we are inclined to think that all men will be under the
necessity of conceding that Christianity is the _fittest_, for it
stoutly refuses to die.

In their beginning they repudiated the idea of the inspiration of the
Bible; to this they have held without change. Further than this, they
acknowledged that the Bible was an authentic history, but now they
calumniate the idea, and blaspheme the Bible and its God. In these
respects they have grown backwards; and