A very curious controversy took place some years ago, between Herbert Spencer and a religious Weekly. Quoting the words of Paul to the Romans, where he says, "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, etc.," Spencer condemned Paul for this; the religious Weekly objected that Paul was only speaking ironically. And Mr. Spencer generously admitted that such a supposition was quite possible. We are ourselves willing to give Paul every opportunity to exonerate himself, and will not press the charge too vehemently against him. But whatever Paul may have meant in his argument with the Romans, what shall we say about his defense of "guile and craft," in his Epistle to the Thessalonians? And what about his general policy, to be all things to all men,--that is to say, to trim and compromise? Moreover, the practice of the Church during the early centuries, confirms the criticism of such representative writers as Mosheim, Ellicott, Warburton, Lecky, Gibbon, Jortin, Gieseler, and other equally reliable authorities, that "The pernicious maxim that those who make it their business to deceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth, were deserving rather of commendation than of censure." "History forces upon us," writes Bishop Ellicott, "the recognition of pious fraud as a principle which was by no means inoperative in the earliest ages of Christianity." It reflects credit upon this Bishop,--this European,--to admit that the early Christians cultivated the Oriental practice of "lying for the glory of God." Eusebius, the saint who invented Constantine's vision of the cross, boasted that "_he had written what redounded to the glory_ and suppressed whatever tended to the disgrace of religion." "No faith with the heretics," was the cry of the Christian church for centuries. My object in speaking of this is to show that even as our Oriental-born religion, brought over into Europe the germ of monasticism, religious intolerance, the practise of burning men and women alive,--absolutism in matters of faith, determining by authority of councils what shall and what shall not be the truth,--not one of which institutions previously existed in Europe; it also brought over, the Oriental practice of pious lying, and gave it a vogue which it had never before enjoyed in Europe.