y
renounced their former error; secondly, to convince their former friends
that they had good reasons for desertion. Baptists who have become such
from Presbyterians are uniformly the most bigoted, and _vice versa_.

"I am disgusted and grieved with the religious controversies of the
present age. The divisions of schools, old school and new school, and
the polemical zeal and fury with which the contest is waged, are
entirely foreign from the true spirit of Christianity. The Christianity
of the age is, in my view, most unamiable. It has none of those lovely,
mellow features which distinguished primitive Christianity. If
Christianity as it now exists should be propagated over the world, and
thus the millennium be introduced, we should need two or three more
millenniums before the world would be fit to live in."

_Mr. C._ "Why do you judge so, Doctor?"

_Dr. N._ "By the style of our religious periodicals. If I had suddenly
dropped down here, and wished to ascertain at a bird's-eye view the
religious and moral state of the community, I would call for the papers
and magazines, and when I had glanced at them I should pronounce that
community to be in a low moral and religious state which could tolerate
such periodicals. A bad paper cannot live in a good community.

"I have been especially grieved and offended with the recent Catholic
controversy. I abhor much in the Catholic religion; but, nevertheless, I
believe there is a great deal of religion in that Church. I do not like
the condemnation of men in classes. I would not, in controversy with the
Catholics, render railing for railing. They cannot be put down so. They
must be charmed down by kindness and love."

_Mr. C._ "I have been much amused by reading that controversy."

_Dr. N._ "My dear sir, I am sorry to hear you say so. You cannot have
read that controversy with pleasure, without having been made a worse
man by it."

_Mr. C._ "Why, I was amused by it, I suppose, just as I should be amused
by seeing a gladiator's show."

_Dr. N._ "Just so; a very good comparison,--a very accurate comparison!
It is a mere gladiatorial contest; and the object of it, I fear, is not
so much truth as victory."

_Mr. C._ "But Luther fought so, Doctor."

_Dr. N._ "I know it; and I have no sympathy with that trait in the
character of Luther. The world owes more, perhaps, to Martin Luther
than to any other man who has ever lived; and as God makes the wrath of
man to praise him, and