In this connection, it must be borne in mind that nothing is stationary. The minds of men change from age to age; and that which appears to one generation to be the most rootedly established truth, is in the course of a few decades completely rejected. Religion is no exception to the general rule. The Greek, the Roman, the ancient Norse gods have had their day; and not a worshiper remains on earth to bow before their altars. Christianity may likewise pass; already its active devotees form but a minority of the population. And if Christianity as a whole may ultimately relinquish the field altogether, it is still more unlikely that the tenets of any particular sect known today should hold permanent sway over the minds and consciences of sincere men and women. We are allowing hundreds of millions of dollars of property to be insidiously withdrawn from the community, and tied up in the hands of great corporations which in fifty or a hundred years will be the mere shells of soulless organizations. We are making it possible for them to become our economic masters, long after men and women shall have ceased to find spiritual nutriment in any part of their creeds. By what species of casuistry does any person think it possible to put this forward as sane public policy? "O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!" TRUTH OF THE DOCTRINE IS NO TEST. If the argument has thus far been conducted from the standpoint of the outsider, it is not intended to imply that the case against the exemption of church property from taxation rests in any fundamental way on the assumption that the teachings of Christianity or even the creeds of the churches are false. On the contrary, every most material ground for condemnation of the practice in question would continue to be valid, even if the truth of the Christian doctrine were assumed as a starting-point. "My kingdom is not of this world," is the express utterance put into the mouth of Jesus by his biographer. This obviously implies the principle of absolute religious liberty, so far as the secular state is concerned. The Christ of the New Testament disclaimed the intention of constraining the actions of unwilling followers. Even the man who had resolved to betray him was suffered to go forth in peace with the exhortation: "What thou doest, do quickly." In no part of his teaching is there warrant for religious domination of the state, or for control over the private actions of individuals. The only penalty for disobedience was withdrawal from the privilege of communion with him. Even the passage of dubious authenticity which smacks most of ecclesiastical judgment of the individual, goes no farther than to prescribe excommunication from the fellowship of the saints. "Let him be to thee as the Gentile and the publican," involves at most no more than an injunction to withdraw personal companionship from the unworthy. It