flesh, in his nostrils, mouth, and all over the body, and then lighted. Daniel Rovelli had his mouth filled with gunpowder, which being lighted, blew his head to pieces. Sarah Rostignol was split open from the legs to the bosom, and left so to perish on the road between Eyral and Lucerna; Anna Charbonnier was impaled and carried thus on a pike from San Giovanni to La Torre "-and much more of the same sort.

Other historians of that period record numerous similar facts such as these:-" -“In one year (1485) forty women were executed in Burbia as being bewitched or possessed of the Devil." "Peasants in the vicinity of Dôles were authorized,by parliamentary license, to hunt, as wild beasts, men, women, and children afflicted with the disease of Demonomania, who were called Werewolves." "In the electoral see of Trèves, within a few years, six thousand five hundred men were executed as enchanted, bewitched, and possessed of the Devil." "The ministers held it to be imperatively requisite to bring the whole power of justice against devil-worshippers; hundreds of human beings were burnt or incarcerated. The judges worked the rack actively in order to get complete confessions from the bewitched and from those who were supposed to be sold to the Devil." The Church itself sowed the seed and richly fertilized it through its superstitious Dogmas and fanatical Teachings; then, when the crop of heretics and of fanatics appeared it proceeded to torture them or to cut off their heads. All this at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century. And it is only a fragment of what has been done, in the name of Christ, by Protestants and by Patriarchists, as well as by Papists, from the Athanasian triumph at Nicea down to this day! The latest outcroppings of the same degenerate spirit are such et cæteras as the Andover and Union Theological Seminary Heresy Trials; denominational exclusions of "open communionists;" sectarian excommunications of those who doubt the saving power of Atoning Blood; Papal Edicts and Pastoral Letters dictating exactly what all "true Churchmen" must hold and teach; the bitter reproaches and threatenings

of " Orthodoxy" poured forth upon the devoted heads and consecrated lives of such reformers of to-day as were the late Phillips Brooks and Professor Drummond, and as are Dr. Watson, Dr. Abbott, Professor Harper, and other conservative leaders of the New Criticism-to say nothing of the unceasing condemnations and crucifixions of Unitarians and of all others who question the Supreme Deity of Jesus the Christ, on the ground that he never called himself nor in the New Testament is called by any higher name than that of Son of Man and Son of God.

Almost every daily newspaper brings some account of Heresy-persecutions. On the date of this writing appears the following: "The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of who is generally beloved for his virtues, esteemed for his talents, and admired as one who has the courage of his convictions, is accused of heresy by no less than fifty local ministers of all Evangelical Sects. Formal charges have been drawn up and signed by these ministers, and great excitement over the matter prevails in all the religious circles of the State. Denial of the Trinity, of the miraculous birth of Christ, and of bodily Resurrection are the main charges."

Degenerate Christianity has out-paganed Paganism in its bigotry, intolerance and persecutions for full fifteen hundred years past. Even Mohammedanism can hardly show so bitter and bloody a record. But 't is ever thus the higher the attainment the deeper the fall, the more lofty the genuine Religion the more ignominious its corruption and decay.

In an article on the late Professor Harry Drummond by "Ian Maclaren" in the May number of the The North American Review the following passage occurs, which is of special interest as bearing upon the recent heresy trial of its author by the synod of the English Presbyterian Church :

"When one saw the unique and priceless work which he (Dr. Drummond) did, it was inexplicable that the religious world should have cast this man, of all others, out, and have lifted up its voice against him. Had religion so many men of bountiful and winning life, so many thinkers of wide range and genuine culture, so many speakers who could move young men by hundreds towards the kingdom of God that she could afford to have the heart to withdraw her confidence from Drummond? Was there ever such madness and irony before heaven as good people lifting up their testimony and writing articles against this most gracious disciple of the Master, because they did not agree with him about certain things he said or some theory he did not teach, while the world lay around them in unbelief and selfishness, and sorrow and pain? What can be done,' an eminent evangelist once did me the honor to ask, 'to heal the

breach between the religious world and Drummond,' and I dared to reply that in my poor judgment the first step ought to be for the religious world to repent of its sins and make amends to Drummond for its bitterness. The evangelist said it was unlikely to do any such deed, and I did not myself remember any instance of repentance on the part of the Pharisees."

A recent correspondent of "The Observer," a Presbyterian Journal of New York, has discovered the fatal defect in Professor Drummond's Theology. He attended some of his lectures and "in one of them" erroneous views were presented with reference to the Doctrine of the Atonement! The same Journal, commenting on the large number of persons recently admitted to membership in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, exclaims: "A mere roster of converts means little unless we know what sort of converts they are!" This is the same remark long and often made" by skeptics and scoffers" with reference to the sum-totals of professed Christians as proffered evidences of the truth of Christianity, and in criticism of the argument from numbers for the superiority or spiritual worth of any particular church or sect. And it is as pertinent in the latter case as in the former. In either case and in all cases "a mere roster of converts," though it should amount to millions or hundreds of millions of names, is no certain evidence of truth or worth. Non multa, sed multum -not many, but much; not quantity, but quality. "And few there be that find it."

LXIII. THE PRESENT DEGENERATION OF OUR CHURCHES.

AT a recent Bi-Centennial Jubilee of Trinity Church in New York City a well-known Episcopal Rector was brave enough to say, as reported by the Daily Newspapers :"The great sin of to-day is that of giving too much prominence to the rich in our Churches." "During my 15 years in New York I have seen the city's population south of Fourteenth street, increased by the addition of 100,000 souls. In the same period I have witnessed the sad spectacle of 19 churches moving farther uptown. Can any man be blind to the fact that it has been and is the policy, nolens

volens, to take spacious churches away from the people who most urgently need them?" "Another thing we want is freedom of speech in our pulpits. We hem and haw; we wait for a cue. The times in which we live demand something more than that. Let our clergymen be beyond the control of monetary considerations."

He might well have continued his criticisms, and given them especial emphasis, in application to four main and growing evils in all the Protestant Sects, viz.: Proprietorship of Pews, Rich Men's Churches and Poor Men's Churches, Fat-salaries and Starving-salaries, and Sensational-Worship instead of Gospel-Worship.

(a) No Church is worthy to be called Christian in which there is a square foot of space that is not open to all alike without any stipulated price.

(b) No Church is worthy to be called Christian in which the rich and the poor do not meet together with fraternal and cordial recognitions.

(c) No Church is worthy to be called Christian which permits what are known as its "popular" and " talented " ministers to feast while those who fail to attain these flattering distinctions must fast. As the first ministers of Christ had "all things in common," so always should there be a common fund from which all who are received as ministers of Christ should have a community of support, justly proportioned to their several circumstances and needs. No one should have more, and no one less, than what might fairly be called a comfortable livelihood. Such a method would be truly Christian and would effectually forestall that widespread bribery-in the way of luxurious salaries and large perquisites-which now ties tongues, seals lips, and elicits soft words and smooth flatteries, from what is called the Pulpit.

(d) And finally :-No Church is worthy to be called Christian which rejects the simplicity, fervor, plainness, and pointedness of Gospel-Worship—as pictured and patterned in the New Testament-substituting in its place the Sensa. tional Worship of noise or of novelty, of elaborate ritual or of mere æsthetic effect. All of these are sensational; the noise

of the Salvation Army, the novelty of the Pulpit-Crank, the pageant of the elaborate Ritual and the studied softness and soothingness of the Program of Service-all alike are Sensation and not Gospel. No true Christian Church ever has tolerated them or ever will; it is only degenerate Christianity that can devise or welcome them.

Whenever our Clergy will vigorously attack these "four main and growing evils in all the Protestant Sects" and continue the attack till they are somehow remedied, Christianity will spring up anew and begin again to be the same reforming and regenerating power in all the world that it was in the Apostolic age and in the two succeeding centuries.

To the plea for more moderate salaries and fewer perquisites for ministers of the Rich-men's Churches and more equalized support for all the Clergy in general, it is commonly objected that "superior talent and worth should have superior pay." To which we reply:

"What then! Is the reward of Virtue, bread?" Is money "the measure of the man"? In these money-grasping, every-thing-by-money-measuring days, 't is a shame that anyone called a minister of Christ should be found grasping with the rest; should allow his "talent and worth" to be measured and rewarded by money, or by anything that money can procure. Magnificent church edifices, fashionable congregations, exquisite music, enriched rituals, elegant parsonages, and parson's pockets filled with gold are foreign enough from Gospel Christianity. But when they indicate "superior talent and worth" it is high time for some Clergyrebukes and Clergy-reforms similar to those of nineteen centuries ago when money and applause, as measures of talent and worth, were rejected and trodden under foot; when one who "had his raiment of camels' hair, and a leather girdle about his loins, and his meat was locusts and wild honey," dared to say to his would-be aristocratic parishioners, “O, generation of vipers"; when one who had "not where to lay his head" said, of the magnificent temple with its magnificent ritual, crowds of formalistic worshippers, pompous priests and overflowing treasury: "Not one stone shall remain