And to what an extent has this religion of Christ, the evangel of peace and goodwill, been since prostituted! The mistaken--though, no doubt, well-intended--dogmas formulated by the Holy Catholic Church proved to be, in their short-sightedness and complete lack of insight into human nature, a prolific source of degeneration, bigotry, persecution, ignorance, immorality, and extreme ecclesiastical tyranny in the Dark Ages. The rigid and narrow doctrines inculcated by the Puritans have been almost as fruitful a cause of moral perversion and reckless narrow-mindedness. To-day it must be acknowledged that we have outgrown the gross and debasing Christianity of those mediæval times; but many of us are still fast chained in the shackles of prejudice and intolerance, with all their concomitant delusions and hypocrisies. Bruno, in his day, said: "Christianity has been tried for eighteen centuries; the religion of Christ remains to be tried." This remark, however, overstates the case considerably, for it must be confessed that there have been many instances of individual lives which have approached as closely to the ideal as far as it has been practicable within human limits. True Christianity many of us have yet to learn; it is but the husk which exists with the many as yet. Nevertheless, we flatter ourselves sometimes as the elect of the earth, and despatch emissaries of civilization to the darkest corners of heathendom to carry with them only a very imperfect presentment of our great religion in practice and doctrine. It is but lately that stern necessity caused the deserts of the Soudan to be strewn with the corpses of many thousands of dervishes, and the pietist section of the British press rejoiced at the great victory of Christianity over Islam, and the fulfilment of a long-cherished _revenge_ for the most truly Christian of English soldiers! To such an extent can inconsistency flourish among the most morally advanced of the earth's inhabitants. And if Europeans have been zealous in waging war to the death against the heathen in the name of their common religion, they have been no less ready to turn the gospel of peace into an apologia for such an internecine slaughter as few other causes have given rise to, until, at the present day, it is hardly possible to write seriously--in order that they may be taken seriously--the words, "How these Christians love one another!"