venture to call our mass with its symbols, lights, temples, pomp, and music idolatry, and by thus warring against the most sacred things, according to the feelings of my heart, they war against God himself, and they must be rooted out and destroyed like noxious, venemous reptiles." "I understand you, my son, and would willingly believe you in the right, for in fact you have only been declaring my own sentiments on this subject. If such are your feelings and this be your faith, there should be no further strife not only between us, but any one else. If you feel that Christianity in its various forms, rejects no want, no desire, that it is permitted to every mind to worship according to its own light, but in the spirit of truth, the Eternal Being, then those meek hearts, that shrink affrighted from this parade and song, from this splendour of the temple and from the artificial culture of religious mystery, will not be excluded from the community. Those, who like the disciple John and the apostles of Jesus, visit the wilderness of Jordan, and there in the dreariness of the mountains and in holy solitude willingly listen to the Eternal Word, and are anxious to erect there their church like the hut at Bethlehem, lest their fervid imaginations might be overwhelmed with the splendour and sculptured beauty of the statues, and thereby forget their salvation and their God. These people here are likewise true Christians, my son, whatever our priests may say to you about it, and the Father will not reject them. There arose long since in our Cevennes, and in the valleys of the Albigences, a simple faith, a peaceful retreat, far from the pomp and ambiguity of the episcopal and popish church. It may be, that for the good of mankind, for religion, education, and liberty, it was expedient in those earlier ages, that the Bishop of Rome should declare himself the head-shepherd and lay the foundation of a spiritual kingdom; but, that the christian church in later times has declined on that account, admits of no doubt. The bishops and priests were now no longer simple teachers of the word and imitators of the apostles, but they became the head-servants of their spiritual master, who in the disputes of the times was compelled to think first of himself and of his own power, while he assigned to religion that only which was not detrimental to it; therefore it resulted, that when the quiet inhabitants of Alby assembled in their wooded valleys, resolving to free themselves from the abuses, the arbitrary dogmas, as well as from the corruptions of the priests, they were persecuted as heretics, who sought to overturn the papal chair, and therefore Christianity itself. Had there been then, as there was formerly, a free independent church of bishops, these enlightened minds would have found protection and peace, they would have been allowed to assemble in their houses of prayer with their priests, and serve God in what manner they thought it their duty