courage and the common sense to accept the good, and throw away
the bad. Evil is not good because found in good company, and truth
is still truth, even when surrounded by falsehood.

_Question_. I see that you are frequently charged with disrespect
toward your parents--with lack of reverence for the opinions of
your father?

_Answer_. I think my father and mother upon several religious
questions were mistaken. In fact, I have no doubt that they were;
but I never felt under the slightest obligation to defend my father's
mistakes. No one can defend what he thinks is a mistake, without
being dishonest. That is a poor way to show respect for parents.
Every Protestant clergyman asks men and women who had Catholic
parents to desert the church in which they were raised. They have
no hesitation in saying to these people that their fathers and
mothers were mistaken, and that they were deceived by priests and
popes.

The probability is that we are all mistaken about almost everything;
but it is impossible for a man to be respectable enough to make a
mistake respectable. There is nothing remarkably holy in a blunder,
or praiseworthy in stubbing the toe of the mind against a mistake.
Is it possible that logic stands paralyzed in the presence of
paternal absurdity? Suppose a man has a bad father; is he bound
by the bad father's opinion, when he is satisfied that the opinion
is wrong? How good does a father have to be, in order to put his
son under obligation to defend his blunders? Suppose the father
thinks one way, and the mother the other; what are the children to
do? Suppose the father changes his opinion; what then? Suppose
the father thinks one way and the mother the other, and they both
die when the boy is young; and the boy is bound out; whose mistakes
is he then bound to follow? Our missionaries tell the barbarian
boy that his parents are mistaken, that they know nothing, and that
the wooden god is nothing but a senseless idol. They do not hesitate
to tell this boy that his mother believed lies, and hugged, it may
be to her dying heart, a miserable delusion. Why should a barbarian
boy cast reproach upon his parents?

I believe it was Christ who commanded his disciples to leave father
and mother; not only to leave them, but to desert them; and not
only to desert father and mother, but to desert wives and children.
It is also told of Christ that he said that he came to set fathers
against children and chi