"This is that bread which came down from heaven; not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead; he that eateth of this bread shall live forever." "And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. "And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal." So I find in the book of John, that in order to be saved we must not only believe in Jesus Christ, but we must eat the flesh and we must drink the blood of Jesus Christ. If that gospel is true, the Catholic Church is right. But it is not true. I can not believe it, and yet for all that, it may be true. But I do not believe it. Neither do I believe there is any god in the universe who will damn a man simply for expressing his belief. "Why," they say to me, "suppose all this should turn out to be true, and you should come to the day of judgment and find all these things to be true. What would you do then?" I would walk up like a man, and say, "I was mistaken." "And suppose God was about to pass judgment upon you, what would you say?" I would say to him, "Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you." Why not? I am told that I must render good for evil. I am told that if smitten on one cheek I must turn the other. I am told that I must overcome evil with good. I am told that I must love my enemies; and will it do for this God who tells me to love my enemies to damn his? No, it will not do. It will not do. In the book of John all these doctrines of regeneration--that it is necessary to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; that salvation depends upon belief--in this book of John all these doctrines find their warrant; nowhere else. Read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then read John, and you will agree with me that the three first gospels teach that if we are kind and forgiving to our fellows, God will be kind and forgiving to us. In John we are told that another man can be good for us, or bad for us, and that the only way to get to heaven is to believe something that we know is not so. All these passages about believing in Christ, drinking his blood and eating his flesh, are afterthoughts. They were written by the theologians, and in a few years they will be considered unworthy of the lips of Christ. VI. THE CATHOLICS