“I am astonished,” I said, “to find that you have so carefully studied the records of the teachings and doctrines of Christ.” “Is it not the duty of any man,” he answered, “especially of one in a responsible position, carefully to consider the arguments and doctrines of all who are sincere and earnest in their convictions, and, however averse they may be from our preconceived opinions, to weigh them, as far as possible, calmly, and without prejudice, and see what they really are and what truth there may be in them? and was not this peculiarly incumbent on me in the case of so noble and spiritual a teacher as Christ? Was it not my duty to endeavor, as far as in me lay, first to recognize the great principles of his teaching, and then in their light to examine and weigh his very words as far as they are authentically reported to us by his followers? It is this fixed notion, from which we cannot easily free ourselves, that we in our own views alone can be right, that shuts up the mind and encrusts our faith with superstitions. We at our best are merely men, subject to errors, short-sighted, fixed in prejudices, and seeing but a part of anything. No system of religion ever embraced all truth; no system is without gleams of it; all recognize a higher power above us and beyond our comprehension; and nothing is more unbecoming than to scorn what we have not even striven to understand, or to shut our ears and our minds to any doctrine or faith which is earnestly, seriously propounded and accepted by others. Unfortunately, it is this narrow-mindedness and arrogance of opinion which has always impeded the growth and development of truth. There is nothing so bitter as religious controversy,—nothing which has so petrified our intelligence or has begotten such crimes and such persecutions. Therefore it was that I deemed it my duty to study and endeavor to understand the doctrine and belief of all sincere minds, whether of those who worshiped Jehovah or Zeus, Mithras or Christ, and not to reject them as wicked or erroneous simply because they were averse from the faith in which I had been educated. Will you excuse me if I say that what amazes me in regard to the Christian faith is, that while it is claimed that Christ is God, and therefore to be implicitly obeyed in all his commands, so little intelligence is shown in studying those commands, and such willful perversion in avoiding them even when they are plainly enunciated; and again, that while claiming that love and forgiveness are the very corner-stone of your faith, you Christians none the less not only accept war and battle as arbitraments of right, but in the name of your great founder,—nay, of your very God,—have endeavored at times to enforce those doctrines by the most hideous of crimes, and by wholesale slaughter of those who differed from you in minor particulars of faith; and still more, do constantly even now exhibit such narrow-minded adherence to mere words and texts, without consideration