This suggests a word in regard to your questions whether I have heard Mr. ---- and whether he can be fairly answered. I have never heard him on the subjects of which you speak, but I have read enough, I think, to judge him fairly. I recognize his brilliant gifts, his wit, his rhetorical power, but I am surprised that one of your natural clearness of mind should not see that he deals most unfairly with the questions of religion. His representation of Christianity is a caricature, and it takes great charity not to believe it is an _intentional_ caricature. His treatment of the Scriptures is inexcusably unfair. If a Christian were to deal with an infidel book as Mr. ---- deals with the Bible, there would be no bound to the charges of outrageous misrepresentation and perversion. His abuse of Christians and Christianity is often more like the raving of a madman than like the calm judgment of a fair-minded reasoner. What are we to think of a man who can sit down and deliberately write and send out to the world such words as these?--"Hundreds, and thousands, and millions, have lost their reason in contemplating the monstrous falsehoods of Christianity;" "Nine-tenths of the people in the penitentiaries are believers;" "The orthodox Christian says that if he can only save his little soul, if he can barely squeeze into heaven, ... it matters not to him what becomes of brother or sister, father or mother, wife or child. He is willing that they should burn if he can sing." This is enough. But what shall be said of such ravings? Suppose Mr. ---- finds imperfections in the Church; suppose he finds a multitude of professed Christians that are not what they should be, just as Christ has given us reason to expect,--does that settle the real nature of Christianity? Suppose "nine-tenths of the people in the penitentiaries" were American citizens,--does that prove that American citizenship is a bad thing or make it worth while for a man to spend his life in denouncing our Constitution? Mr. ---- knows there is a very different kind of citizen, and he knows that these men are in the penitentiary, not because they have kept the laws of their country, but because they have broken them. So, even if the monstrous assertion were true that nine-tenths of the occupants of the penitentiaries are Christian professors, they are there, not on account of Christianity, but in spite of it. True Christianity never sent them there, and every honest man knows that. Christianity is founded on Christ, and the required fruit of it is holiness, rectitude with man and purity before God. This is a fact that any man who _wants_ to know the truth can understand by an hour's study of the teachings of Christ and his apostles.