But it is not this quality of fish that our parable speaks about. In fact, such, to make it plainer, are no fish at all; they are vermin, lizards, or whatever species of reptile you wish to name them. A man that is outspoken in unbelief and profligate in his morals is not within the Gospel net. Christ in this parable is speaking of such people as wished to be recognized as Christians, confess themselves as spiritual and converted children of the Kingdom, and as long as they do that, we may have our serious doubts as to their sincerity; we may, as we see their faults and obliqueness of conduct, consider their Christianity of a rather dubious specimen or type--hypocritical is the common term. But it's not for us to read them out of the membership of the saints, much less dare the Church deny them access to the house of God, or resort to external force, police or military measures to enforce her teachings and persecute those who differ from her. Has that ever been done, you question? My dear hearers, the robes of the professing Church are red with the blood of saints, because it has failed to heed the parables of our consideration to-day. We think of a John Huss, a forerunner of the Reformation, taken to the stake at Constance, burned as an arch-heretic; of the Albigenses and Waldenses, persecuted, slaughtered by the so-called holy Christian Church, banished for no other cause but adherence to their Bibles. We call to our remembrance the scenes of the Inquisition, the horrible treatments and tortures, when Rome undertook to separate the bad from the good, and destroyed thousands of Christians better than herself, 18,000 in the Netherlands, 60,000 in France. We can still hear the bells tolling on that fatal day, August 24, 1572, called St. Bartholomew's Day, when the signal for a massacre was given that cost 30,000 Huguenots their lives in the streets of Paris. Time fails us to speak of England and Germany with their gruesome thirty years of religious war, of the countries where fanaticism, armed with the sword, wished to root out what it thought was tares, and cast away the bad fish; and let us mark that the Pope resides not only in Rome, but there are a multitude of little popes everywhere, judging and pronouncing on one another, with all the stringency and self-confidence of their colossal type in Rome, their anathemas, and who would, if they could, quickly and radically empty the net. But, says the Savior, let them be gathered together until the day of separation.