the hand that was once the hand of love has lost the sweet cunning of friendship, and is lifted up against me I think of the old faith, I hesitate, stop, inquire, weep, doubt, ask, and only when conviction is forced upon me by reason can I believe it. So, if I find God drawn as unjust, as willing the death of the sinner, willing that he should suffer eternal torment, I say, "Such things show that somebody has been writing between the lines. My God could not have written that. If God wrote your gospel, it is contrary to the thought of God that is in me." I will worship no God who is lower than a noble man. You and I know what beauty is in man. How lovely it is to see a man slow to anger, plenteous in mercy, quickly forgiving, gracious, long-suffering. If you say that of God, I believe you; but if you say that He punishes sinners to all eternity, and gets pleasure out of it— that He took delight in the sacrifice of rams and lambs and bulls, and afterwards in that of His own Son, and that since then He is pleased with constant prayer-meetings, I say, "Pardon me, these are not His words." Therefore, if I find that all these things are contrary to what my soul and conscience tell me God must of necessity be, then I shall forsake them. And though it may be as hard to

forsake them as it may have been to Abraham to forsake the land of his birth, yet, when reason calls, I must forsake these false gods.

So, Lord God, Maker of that faculty by which I rise above all creatures, and come in likeness near to Thee; so reveal Thyself to me, that whatsoever is wrong in conscience may appear also wrong in Thy word; and whatsoever is untrue of Thee, help me truly to unbelieve! For, were I writing a prayer just now, I would pray for unbelief. Most men pray for belief; but I could write a whole book of prayers that God would be pleased to give me unbelief. O Lord, have mercy upon me, and incline my heart to break this law. Help me to deny this thing. From this doctrine, Good Lord deliver me-from the doctrine of eternal damnation, baptismal regeneration, and the destruction of sinners, from the belief that, since I began to speak, millions upon millions of human souls have gone down to damnation. O Lord, have mercy upon me speedily; help me, Jesus Christ, help me ; Spirit of the living, loving God, save me from this. Better the fire through which Thy three children walked of old than these things. Better to be turned away, Ishmael-like, poor, dying, starved, than to be fed by false doctrines. Go, worship

what you like, I have no taste for grotesqueness. Excuse me, if these things are true, I want them not; they are not true to me.

So, in spite of the Cardinal, I intend to use my reason. I am not going to give up reason because it takes me wrong. Some of you lately wished to know what my "views" were. Now you have got some of them. All revelation, and all that is asserted or pretended to be revelation, must be tried by reason, and that only which is reasonable can a reasonable man believe. Come from whom it will, this outcry against reason is an affectation, an insincerity, or an imbecility. Having got into a fog get out of it as fast as you can. I would come after you if that would save you; but I fear that then there would be only two fools in the fog. If I have failed to make these things clear to you, tell me, and I will try again. The Cardinal is content to cut off his reason. I hope it will be counted to him for righteousness. But follow him? No, never. I prefer the whole nature of man, and to have the distinguishing glory of man-" made in the image of God."

BABEL AND THE CUNEIFORM

INSCRIPTIONS:

(LAW IN LANGUAGE).

Morning, May 16th, 1875.

"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

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And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

"And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth : and they left off to build the city.” -GENESIS xi. 1-8.

THERE is a parallelism between the life of Man, and the life of a man ; and, just as the memory of one man may not be trusted, so it is with humanity. Here and there we get a large stretch of fancy over something that has been pretty nearly forgotten; and invention is set to work to eke out what is deficient in fact. You can be supplied with the history of anything, because imagination never fails, though facts may be scarce. So, wise men build not their faith upon the shifting things of tradition. But I should call that man eminently foolish who should close Shakespeare, because it was doubtful how he learned his letters-whether from his mother or from his grandmother. Yet, this is what that set of people, who count themselves nearer to God than others, continually plague others to do.

Nobody knows anything about the origin of speech, and yet none are such fools as not to use speech, or not to make the most of it. And there is a pleasure in going into these old traditions-to hear what the old world has to say about that still older world, who were "all of the same lip and the same speech." It is a very curious question, but of