thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God.' (Romans xiv.) A yet more eminent example is on record, whose conduct bears a reference to a case of still more awful responsibility than that instanced by the Apostle. 'If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment what I should say and what I should speak. (John xii. 47-49.) How, in the face of these declarations, can men impeach the faith and pronounce sentence on the practice of their brethren, assuming their own judgments as the standard of truth, and their own conceptions as the measure of holiness? How, in the face of these declarations, can ministers of the Gospel have ever grasped, as a right, the power which Christ himself disclaimed; not leaving judgment till the last day, but delivering over to reproach and death those who were 'weak in the faith,' or perplexed with 'doubtful disputations'? How, in the face of these declarations, can priests of any church have denied that to his own master every man stands or falls, and have made close inquisition into the secrets of the soul, pretending to understand its errors, and presumptuously undertaking to cleanse its secret faults by methods which no voice from above has sanctioned as lawful, and no sign from on high has shown to be efficacious? Could such inquisitors and such priests (and they are to be found in every Church) have mingled with the followers of Jesus, they would have cried out for fire from heaven on the Samaritans, notwithstanding every prohibition; they would have questioned the sinful Mary, not satisfied with her loving much, till they had ascertained how much; they would have pronounced the young lawyer very far from the kingdom of God unless he could have made a fuller profession of faith; and, meeting the adulteress in the outer courts of the temple as she left the mild presence of Jesus, would have prescribed her penance with a rigor well pleasing to the accusers, who were themselves too modest to cast the first stone. Since Jesus, who knew what was in the hearts of those around him, forbore to condemn, much more ought they to forbear who have no such knowledge. If he awarded no punishment to those who rejected the Gospel he understood so well, much less should they who are themselves but learners inflict pain of body or mind on their fellow-disciples who understand differently, or the unbelievers who cannot understand at all. If he who spake as his Father commanded him left it to the Father to enforce these commands, it ill becomes those on whom the Spirit has not descended to assume an authority which inspiration itself could not sanction.