It would be unfair, though, to depreciate the services of the Christian ministers who in a choice between dogma and reform have bravely sided with Nature, and, defying the wrath both of spiritual and spirituous poison-mongers, of rum-sellers and heretic-hunters, are trying their utmost to undo the mischief of their antinatural creed, by frankly admitting that a man can be defiled by “things that enter his mouth,” and that the sacrament of eucharistic alcohol should be abandoned to the rites of devil-worshipers. But the religion which pretends to inculcate a peace-making spirit of meekness has been strangely remiss in opposing the excessive use of a diet which is clearly incompatible with the promotion of that virtue. In Christians, as in Turks, Tartars, and North American Redskins, a chiefly carnivorous diet engenders the instincts of carnivorous beasts, and a Peace Congress celebrating its banquets with sixteen courses of flesh food might as well treat a vigilance committee to sixteen courses of opium. “Frugality” should again be promoted in the ancient sense of the word; in a community of reformants temperance and vegetarianism should go hand in hand. Or rather, the word “temperance” should be used in the extended sense that would make it a synonym of Abstinence from all kinds of unnatural food and drink; and Dr. Schrodt’s rule should become the canon of every dietetic reform league. “Avoid,” he says, “all drinks and stimulants repulsive to the palate of an unseduced child, but also all comestibles that need artificial preparation to make them palatable.” The first part of that rule would exclude opium, tobacco, alcoholic beverages, tea, coffee, absinthe, fetid cheese, and caustic spices. The second would abolish many kinds of animal food, but sanction milk, butter, eggs, honey, and other “semi-animal” substances, condemned by the extreme school of vegetarians. “From the egg to the apple,” is an old Latin phrase which proves that the frugality of the ancient Romans never went to such extremes. Milk, eggs, and vegetable fats, in their combination with farinaceous dishes, might amply replace the flesh food of the northern nations, and, considering the infinite variety of fruits and vegetables known to modern horticulture, there seems no reason why a vegetarian diet should necessarily be a monotonous one. The Religion of Nature will require the renunciation of several deep-rooted prejudices, but its path of salvation will in no sense be a path of thorns. CHAPTER V. SKILL. A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.