clay. Religion is supposed to give it this, its demanded freedom of noble flight, and the Christian religion, above all religions in the world, with its consoling teaching that out of sorrow cometh joy, and out of Death is born Life, should make for the happiness and peace of every living creature. But when the very ministers of that glorious Faith cast doubt upon it, and live their own lives in direct opposition to it,--when undevout and therefore limited scientists dissect a midge of truth in order to launch a leviathan of fallacious theory,--when there is no ONE pure and simple Church of Christ where all may meet in honest worship of His perfect Creed, but only a million Sects which blaspheme His Divine memory by their outrageous and petty quarrels one with the other,--it is no matter for surprise that a strong revulsion of feeling should set in, or that the Soul of the Nation, conceiving itself grievously wronged and neglected, should try to find some fresh path of its own heavenward,--some way out of mere Sham--in the belief that if it obeys its own instinctive desire towards the Highest Ideal, God will not suffer it to go far astray. For the quarrels of the Churches are the second crucifixion of Christ. The apathy of the priesthood is the deliberate casting away to sin of the people. Where there is no unity, there is no force; and the divine founder of Christianity Himself has told us that a house divided against itself shall not stand. Yet when one comes to think of it, it is the strangest thing in the world that Christians should quarrel, seeing how plain and clear are the instructions left to them for their guidance by the Master whom they profess to serve. The New Testament is easy reading. Its commands are brief and concise enough. There would seem to be no room for discussion or difference. Why should there be followers of Luther, Wesley, or any other limited human preacher or teacher, when all that is necessary is that we should be followers of Christ? The Soul of the Nation asks no more than this Gospel of Love, lovingly imparted,--it seeks but for the one firm faith in the eternal things which are its birthright,--a faith held purely, and wholly undoubted by those whose high mission is to teach it to each generation in turn,--it craves no more than that touch of heavenly sympathy which makes the whole world kin--that holy link which binds all mankind together in one strong knot of indissoluble spiritual belief in the love and justice; the Unseen Force behind Creation, which will surely, out of the verities of that same love and justice, grant us a future life wherein will be made clear to us the reason and necessity of our strange sufferings, martyrdoms, disappointments and losses in this present mere brief episode of living. The Soul of the Nation does not in itself ask reward for its good deeds,--nor does it weakly complain if punishment be inflicted upon it for its evil ones,--but