judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of
myself; but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment what I
should say and what I should speak. (John xii. 47-49.) How, in the face
of these declarations, can men impeach the faith and pronounce sentence
on the practice of their brethren, assuming their own judgments as the
standard of truth, and their own conceptions as the measure of holiness?
How, in the face of these declarations, can ministers of the Gospel have
ever grasped, as a right, the power which Christ himself disclaimed; not
leaving judgment till the last day, but delivering over to reproach and
death those who were 'weak in the faith,' or perplexed with 'doubtful
disputations'? How, in the face of these declarations, can priests of
any church have denied that to his own master every man stands or falls,
and have made close inquisition into the secrets of the soul, pretending
to understand its errors, and presumptuously undertaking to cleanse its
secret faults by methods which no voice from above has sanctioned as
lawful, and no sign from on high has shown to be efficacious? Could such
inquisitors and such priests (and they are to be found in every Church)
have mingled with the followers of Jesus, they would have cried out for
fire from heaven on the Samaritans, notwithstanding every prohibition;
they would have questioned the sinful Mary, not satisfied with her
loving much, till they had ascertained how much; they would have
pronounced the young lawyer very far from the kingdom of God unless he
could have made a fuller profession of faith; and, meeting the
adulteress in the outer courts of the temple as she left the mild
presence of Jesus, would have prescribed her penance with a rigor well
pleasing to the accusers, who were themselves too modest to cast the
first stone. Since Jesus, who knew what was in the hearts of those
around him, forbore to condemn, much more ought they to forbear who have
no such knowledge. If he awarded no punishment to those who rejected the
Gospel he understood so well, much less should they who are themselves
but learners inflict pain of body or mind on their fellow-disciples who
understand differently, or the unbelievers who cannot understand at all.
If he who spake as his Father commanded him left it to the Father to
enforce these commands, it ill becomes those on whom the Spirit has not
descended to assume an authority which inspiration itself could not
sanction. It b