of the wretchedness of earth, but law is not universally a scourge and an evil. I have never been a member of the attacked kirk of Scotland, nor was I brought up a Presbyterian-those bodies can take care of themselves. Yet I must deny that any Protestant body could be justly called the "twin sister of the inquisition." One can count on his fingers, almost, the number of persons who were put to death by Protestants for religious belief or non-belief. Such rare occurrences were due to some branch of the tree momentarily lacking its nutriment, whereas the steady practice of Rome showed a tree poisoned from topmost twig to deepest root.

The fatal charge must be confessed, that Ingersoll has not discriminated between the branches of the church, or between the Church of Christ and Christianity. This failure is so great as to disarm the whole philippic of its weight, and it might be denied that Christianity was the religion of which he had been the assailant. The Protestant church is not a sister of the inquisition. Christ and His apostles can not be arraigned for the corruptions which Ingersoll has noted.

The Bishop's Closing Words-Peace. Prosperity and True

Christianity Inseparable.

Let the individual man present the highest type of personal preparation, with every appetite, desire, and natural perfection, subordinated to the moral reason, to his highest spiritual being. Let our homes be a sacred retreat where the wife and mother shall not play the part of a scold nor the husband and father the part of a tyrant-homes in which there shall be no scorching blasts of passion nor polar storms of coldness and hate; homes in which happy children shall ever see the beauty of love and the beauty

of holiness; homes cheered by music, refined by books, and gladdened with songs; homes of sympathy, homes of self-sacrifice, homes of devotion, homes of undying affection; homes which would lure the angels from the felicities and fellowships of the upper paradise to dwell in these bowers of earthly bliss.

Let every form of social evil be banished from the world, from the maddening bowl "which biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder," to the "steps of her that take hold on death." Let every personal right be given to man -the right of property in the earth; the right to his share of the multitudinous forms of material blessings; the right to property in ideas, to property in character and reputation-and the venomous slanderer no more walk the earth. Let every duty growing out of these rights be faithfully performed. Let the rights of woman be maintained, she being placed, not beneath man's feet, but by his side, with every faculty of her nature called out, and not repressed. Let the rights of children be respected and the most tender, judicious and elevating educational influences be thrown around them. Let all the antagonisms between capital and labor forever cease-the laborer no longer be an eyeservant, but receive his honest due for his honest work and yet have time to develop, by books, society and home, his immortal mind. Let not the buyer say, "It is naught; it is naught," and then go straightway and boast what he hath done; nor the seller expose only the best side of his wares. Let there be entire truthfulness in all the intercourse between man and man, in looks, and words, and acts; and all white lies with all black lies be no more known.

Let science push her discoveries to the utmost into all the realms of nature, for "the relief of man's estate"-no more disdaining the useful as beneath its notice; and Watts

with the steam-engine, and Davy with the safety-lamp, and Stephenson spanning the Menai straits, and Hoe with the printing-press, and Morse with the telegraph, and Tyndall with the smoke-respirator, be followed by other and greater benefactors of mankind. Let art no more be prostituted to the basest of purposes, and the artist be no more disobedient to the heavenly visions of purity and grace; let genius consecrate its highest gifts to the weal and not to the woe of mankind, and the works

That hold with sweet but cursed art.
Their incantations o'er the heart,

Till every pulse of pure desire

Throbs with the glow of passion's fire,

no more proceed from the pen.

Let the hand of government be lighter than eider-down upon the head of the obedient subject, and yet stronger than a thunderbolt to avenge his wrongs. Then you have only the flower and the blessed golden fruit of those two immortal principles of Christianity: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself."

"WE think of the Bible as a structure solid and eternal." -Dr. Burtol.

"I KNOW not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep no Bible."-Thomas Paine Criticising the Scriptures.

"TO SEE God's own law universally acknowledged as it stands in the holy written book; to see this-or the true unwearied aim and struggle toward this-is a thing worth living and dying for."-Thomas Carlyle.

"I HAVE but one book (the Bible,) but that is the best." - Wm. Collins' Reply to Dr. Johnson.

"THE Bible containes a complete series of facts, and of historical men to explain time and eternity, such as no other religion has to offer. Everything in it is grand and worthy of God. The Gospel is more than a book; it is a living thing, active, powerful, overcoming every obstacle in its way."-Napoleon Bonaparte.

"To the Bible men will return because they can not do without it. Because happiness is our being's end and aim, and happiness belongs to righteousness, and righteousness is revealed in the Bible. For this simple reason men will return to the Bible, just as a man who tried to give up food, thinking that it was a vain thing and that he could do without it, would return to food, or a man who tried to give up sleep, thinking it was a vain thing and he could do without it, would return to sleep."-Matthew Arnold.

PROF. WILCOX'S REPLY.

The Professor's Interview with Paine's Physician, Dr. ManlyRemorseful Death of the Great Infidel.

Undoubtedly, Mr. Paine was misrepresented by his opponents. Unquestionably, he has been maligned. That he was enthusiastic, unselfish and immensely serviceable in the defense of the American colonies, it would be ungenerous and unfair to deny. That his pen was a power in the struggle for independence is matter of record. And his admirers will have it that only an "orthodox" Christian has any grievance against him as a counter-balance to to these services. Paine the patriot, they would have us acknowledge, was blameless, whatever may be said of Paine the religionist.

There is no greater mistake. There are men by the million in these states who are not "orthodox" or devout or Christian in profession or in life, who see clearly and say freely that Christianity is a power that the nation never could have spared. As patriotic citizens they defend it. And suppose that Paine had succeeded in his fierce crusade against American Christianity? Suppose he had banished the Bible from every fireside, silenced every church bell, soured every Christian in the land into a sneering unbeliever like himself? Suppose he had wiped out with a stroke of his pen, as he deliberately aimed to do, all that Christianity has ever been worth to the intelligence, the refinement, the morality, the beneficence, of this country—all the institutions it has founded-every college, seminary, hospital, asylum, mission-school-what would