1102. Diogenes took a lantern to see if he could find an honest man in Greece. Were any one to employ a lime-light, he would not in Christendom find a Christian who carries out in practice the precepts of his divine Master. If those who know their Master’s will, yet do it not, are to be beaten with many stripes, while the ignorant pagan is to bear but few, were it not better to be a pagan than such a Christian as those are, for the most part, who exist in Christendom? Unless our missionaries can make better Christians, is it not inhumane to add to the number? 1103. On calling on a bigoted, self-styled disciple of Christ to show me anyone who put the precepts of Christ into practice, the reply was, “_We rely on his merits._” “That is _all_ you do,” said I. “In common with others of your tenets, you make the blood of Christ a fund on which every sinner may draw in proportion as he has confidence in its detersive influence.” 1104. I am supported in some of the views above presented, by a communication from a believer in revelation, under the signature of _Bosanquet_, to the Baltimore Church Times, for June 15, 1848. I will quote a portion of this communication, which is as follows: 1105. “But the want of faith is more open and direct than this, and it is the more obvious and pointed upon religious subjects. The Bible is boldly and practically denied in every particular. No class or body of men believe and obey it, and strange as it may seem, it is by no nation, or people, or churches, or sects of men, less implicitly believed and followed than by those very people and sections of the church who talk so much about it. There are no persons less obedient to the plain sense and mandates of the written word of God, than those who most speak of and uphold it as the sole authority and standard, and reject all assistance from the history of the church and what is spoken against as tradition. Every class of persons reject some portion or other of the sacred Scriptures. If you talk to some of temporal honour and rewards, and the observance of a day of rest, and the patriarchs, they will say, Oh! that is the Old Testament, and is abrogated. If you speak to others of good works, they will say, Oh! that is only in the Gospels, and the Epistles carry us much beyond that, and are superior to it. Unitarians, again, receive a Bible of their own; that is, just so many passages are excluded as will suit their own belief and purpose. Others, of numerous sects, dwell each upon some half dozen chapters, or passages, or phrases, or words of Scripture, of the Epistles especially, and dwell upon them idolatrously and devotedly, to the exclusion of all the rest, so far as the authority of Scripture is concerned, from belief and practice. 1106. This is even in the religious world—the thinking and reasoning world. Let us now turn our observation to the world itself; to the working and practical.