challenged, the Church refuses tourney ground to our party, and we must contend as best we can. In treating the subject of “Christianity and Freethought,” in reply to the address of the Bishop of Peterborough, I am entitled to narrow, and shall narrow, the question covered by this reply, to one merely between the Freethinker and the Church of England Christian only. The litany, hymns, and prayers which formed the preface to the Bishop’s advocacy are here fair weapons to use against him. I do not stand here to-night to plead against Roman Catholic Christianity, or against Wesleyan, Independent, or Baptist nonconforming Christianity, nor do I plead against Unitarian Christianity. I am here to reply to the Church and State Christianity, the thirty-nine articles Christianity; to the system with which the Lord Bishop of Peterborough has identified his brilliant talents and great powers of speech, and with all the faults and corruptions of which he must rest burdened so far as this controversy is concerned. Here he must not throw aside any one of the three Creeds, here every line of the Prayer Book affects his teaching. The Christianity he must defend is that which the 9 and 10 William IV., cap. 32, maintains; the Christianity by law established. I pass without comment the fact that the text selected by the Lord Bishop was not only from the Gospel whose authenticity is doubted by many Christians, but from a chapter specially regarded as an interpolated one. On this head, I leave Dr. Magee to debate with Dr. Davidson. But I am bound to draw attention to the very extraordinary exposition given of the contents of this chapter, which we are invited to study. Dr. Magee says that the people who were with Jesus, “were doubtless drawn to Christ by the fame of his miracles,” and that when they left him “it was not that they doubted of his ability to perform miracles.” Now, so far as this chapter is concerned, there is not the smallest particle of reference to miracles at all, and, therefore, Dr. Magee’s words on this head, and even admitting his alleged authority, were only so much foundationless verbiage. And when Dr. Magee says that this chapter teaches that “the religion of Christ was not received unquestioningly, even in the case of his miracles, for in spite of his miracles they ventured to question his doctrine,” I can only express my deep regret that the many occupations of the Lord Bishop of Peterborough should have left him without the time to master the actual contents of the chapter on which his sermon was based.