n will hand over their eternal interests to the care of a Church. We
can never dismiss from memory the sadness with which we once listened to
the confession of a certain foreign professor: "I used to be concerned
about religion," he said in substance, "but religion is a great subject.
I was very busy; there was little time to settle it for myself. A
protestant, my attention was called to the Roman Catholic religion. It
suited my case. And instead of dabbling in religion for myself I put
myself in its hands. Once a year," he concluded, "I go to mass." These
were the words of one whose work will live in the history of his
country, one, too, who knew all about parasitism. Yet, though he thought
it not, this is parasitism in its worst and most degrading form. Nor, in
spite of its intellectual, not to say moral sin, is this an extreme or
exceptional case. It is a case, which is being duplicated every day in
our own country, only here the confessing is expressed with a candor
which is rare in company with actions betraying so signally the want of
it.

The form of parasitism exhibited by a certain section of the narrower
Evangelical school is altogether different from that of the Church of
Rome. The parasite in this case seeks its shelter, not in a Church, but
in a Doctrine or a Creed. Let it be observed again that we are not
dealing with the Evangelical Religion, but only with one of its
parasitic forms--a form which will at once be recognized by all who know
the popular Protestantism of this country. We confine ourselves also at
present to that form which finds its encouragement in a single doctrine,
that doctrine being the Doctrine of the Atonement--let us say, rather, a
perverted form of this central truth.

The perverted Doctrine of the Atonement, which tends to beget the
parasitic habit, may be defined in a single sentence--it is very much
because it can be defined in a single sentence that it is a perversion.
Let us state it in a concrete form. It is put to the individual in the
following syllogism: "You believe Christ died for sinners; you are a
sinner; therefore Christ died for you; _and hence you are saved_." Now
what is this but another species of molluscan shell? Could any trap for
a benighted soul be more ingeniously planned? It is not superstition
that is appealed to this time; it is reason. The agitated soul is
invited to creep into the convolutions of a syllogism, and entrench
itself behind a Doctrine more ven