old inquisitors might be men of benevolence--spiritual physicians, who amputated existence with a view to save the eternal life of the patient. It is now many years since I wrote or spoke against them on religious grounds, and for a long period I have ceased to speak of persecution as being either unscriptural or unchristian. It will not do to say that what we have seen of persecution has been but the abuse of Christianity. It is in itself a condemnation of Christianity to be obliged to repudiate the conduct of all Christian churches. It will not do to say that Christians have not been wise enough to see, nor good enough to image, the divine gentleness of Christ. The Christian churches have been presided over by pastors who have possessed both penetration and purity in the highest degree--who were able to see what there was to be seen, and devout enough to render it in their lives. Try the question even in our day. If Christ be the symbol of love and gentleness to all who believe in his name, how is it that in every part of the world the Freethinker should fear to fall into the hands of the Christian? How is it that he must set a watch upon his words in every town and hamlet in our own land, lest the free expression of his deepest convictions should cost him his position, his employment, and his character? Branded, outcast, and friendless, the Christian's door is the last at which he would knock--the Christian's fireside is the last at which he would find a welcome--and the Christian pastor, who in knowledge, duty, and example, most nearly resembles the Christ whom he preaches, is the last man whose path the Freethinker would wish to cross, or into whose ear he would venture to pour the tale of his expatriations. In one passage in my defence I represent persecution, as Lord Brougham and others have done, as a power which spreads opinion. I believed so then, but believe it no longer. I have lived to watch the effects of persecution, and have seen it put down the truth so often, as no longer to doubt its bad efficacy. The ignorant, the timid, the opulent, and the conventional (and these make up the mass of mankind), are all deterred by danger or opprobrium, The resolute and the reckless, the only parties who persist, labour under accumulated disadvantages. Condemned to spend then time in self-defence, development of doctrine--the legitimate and only source of permanent influence--is nearly impossible to them: and it is well for them if they escape acquiring an antagonistic spirit, which disfigures their advocacy and misrepresents their character. Their only proselytes are those who come to them out of spite or out of sympathy, and who of course miss the intellectual ground of conviction, and can be of little real service until they have been re-educated.