nd running down
marriage; as the monks and nuns did who severed themselves from the
world and the flesh, though they often fell into the hands of the
Devil. Still there is another step for Count Tolstoi to take. He has not
pressed one important saying of Christ, and it is this--

"For there are some eunuchs, which were born so from their mother's
womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and
there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of
heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it" (Matt.
xix. 12).

The great Origen followed this advice and emasculated himself. Nor was
he alone in the practice. All the disciples of his contemporary, Valens
of Barathis, made themselves eunuchs. Mantegazza considers them the
spiritual fathers of the Skopskis, a Russian sect dating from the
eleventh century. They have been persecuted, but they number nearly six
thousand, and regard themselves as the real Christians, the only true
followers of Christ. They castrate themselves, and sometimes amputate
the genitals entirely; the women even mutilate their breasts as a mark
of their sex.

Will Count Tolstoi take the final step? It seems logically necessary
even without the text on eunuchs, for the only certain way to avoid
sexual intercourse is to make it impossible. In any case we are very
much obliged to him for holding up the _real_ Christianity, as far as he
sees it, to the purblind and hypocritical mob of professed Christians.
It will fortify Freethinkers in their scepticism, and warn the healthy
manhood and womanhood of Europe against this oriental asceticism which
pretends to be a divine message to the robust Occident. When Tolstoi
goes the one step farther, and embraces the teaching of Jesus in its
entirety, he will be the most powerful enemy of Christianity in the
world. By demonstrating it to be a religion for eunuchs he will array
against it the deepest instincts of mankind.

ROSE-WATER RELIGION. *

* April, 1894.

Most of our readers will recollect the controversy that was carried on,
more than twelve months ago, in the columns of the _Daily Chronicle_.
Mr. Robert Buchanan had published his new poem, "The Wandering Jew," in
which Jesus Christ was depicted as a forlorn vagrant, sick of the evil
and infamy wrought in his name, and for which he was historically though
not intentionally responsible. This poem was reviewed by Mr. Richard
Le Gallienne,