XV. Yet some opponents have professed that Secular cannot be distinguished from Christian rights. Is this so? The right to think for ourselves has been emphatically and reiteratedly declared to be a Christian right:* it "belongs essentially to Christianity." Now Christianity has no such right. It has the right to think the Bible true, and nothing else. * "Six Chapters on Secularism," by Dr. Parker, Cavendish Pulpit, Manchester. The Christian has no right to think Christianity untrue, however untrue it may appear. He dare not think it false. He dare no more think it false than the Catholic dare differ from the dictum of the Church, or the Mahomedan differ from the text of the Koran, or the Hindoo differ from the precepts of the Brahmin. Therefore, the Christian's right to think for himself is simply a compulsion to believe. A right implies relative freedom of action; but the Christian has no freedom. He has no choice but to believe, or perish everlastingly. The Christian right to think for himself is, therefore, not the same as the Secular right. We mean by the right to think, what the term right always implies--freedom and independence, and absence of all crime, or danger of penalty through the honest exercise of thought and maintenance of honest conclusions, whether in favour of or against Christianity. Our assertion is that "Private judgment is free and guiltless." The Christian is good enough to say, we have "a right to think, provided we think rightly." But what does he mean by "rightly?" He means that we should think as he thinks. This is his interpretation of "rightly." Whoever does not fall in with his views, is generally, in his vocabulary, a dishonest perverter of scripture. Now, if we really have the right to differ, we have the right to differ from the Minister or from the Bible, if we see good reason to do so, without being exposed to the censure of our neighbours, or disapprobation of God. The question is not--does man give us the right to think for ourselves? but, does God give it to us? If we must come to a given opinion, our private judgment is unnecessary. Let us know at once what we are to believe, that we may believe it at once, and secure safety. If possible disbelief in Christianity will lead to eternal perdition, the right of private judgment is a snare. We had better be without that perilous privilege, and we come to regard the Roman Catholic as penetrative when he paints private judgment as the suggestion of Satan, and the Roman Catholic no less merciful than consistent when he proscribes it altogether. We must feel astonishment at him who declares the Secular right to be essentially a Christian right, when it is quite a different thing, is understood in an entirely different sense, and has an application unknown and unadmitted by Christianity. This is not merely loose thinking, it is reckless thinking. XVI.