How the Church Judaizes about the Sabbath—pretending, first, that there _is a Sabbath_ in Christianity, and teaching people that there is a sort of piety in calling Sunday _the Sabbath_, and next putting this ritual observance, this abstinence from labor and amusement, on a level with moral duties! When men tithe mint, they are apt to forget justice and mercy. If Jesus were to return, after all these centuries, and were only to do and say just what he did and said about the Sabbath when he was here before, there are many pious Protestants who would think him rather lax in his religious principles. How long he has been with us, and yet we have not known him! An American Protestant bishop once forbade a clergyman of his church to officiate again, because this clergyman had invited a Methodist minister to assist him in the administration of the sacrament. This is backsliding a good way from the position of Him who said, “Forbid him not: he that is not against us is with us.” And again: “Whosoever wishes to do the will of God, the same is my mother, my sister, and my brother.” Dear Master! is _thy_ Church so broad as to include all who desire to do the will of God, and are _our_ churches so narrow that they cannot hold any but those who agree with us in our little notions about ceremony and form? Hast thou been so long time with us, and yet have we not known thee? The Church Actual is a timid Church. It is afraid of truth, and afraid of love. Its creed is full of mysteries too solemn and sacred to be examined. They are the sealed book of the prophet, which is given to the learned clergy, and to the unlearned laity; and the answer of the unlearned laity is, “We are not learned.” And the answer of the learned clergy is, “It is sealed. It is a mystery. We must not even try to understand it.” The Actual Church is not fond of a free examination of its tenets, but rather represses it by the flaming terrors of perdition impending over honest error. The Church Actual sticks in the letter. How it idolizes the Bible! But when you ask, _What?_ you find it is rather the letter of the Bible than its manly, generous, humane, and holy spirit. It babbles of verbal inspiration and literal inspiration, which are phrases as absurd as it would be to say “bodily spirit.” Question the inspiration of the letter, and a thousand voices cry, “You are cutting away the very foundations of our faith. If we cannot believe every letter of the Bible to be from God, we have nothing to hold by.” But the apostle Paul thought somewhat differently, when he said, “Who hath also made us able ministers of the New Testament, _not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life_.”