treasured at varions churches in Europe, and exhibited with unblushing
effrontery. Even the prepuce of Jesus, amputated at his circumcision,
was kept at Rome.

Several churches boasted the same articles. John the Baptist's body was
in dozens of different places, and the finger with which he pointed to
Jesus as his successor was shown, in a fine state of preservation, at
Besancon, Toulouse, Lyons, Bourges, Macon, and many other towns.

John Calvin pointed out, in his grim _Treatise on Relics_, that the Holy
Coat of Christ was kept in several churches. In our own time, a book on
this subject has been written by H. von Sybel, who proves that the Trier
coat is only one of twenty that were exhibited. All were authentic, and
all were guaranteed by the same authority. Holy Mother Church lied and
cheated without a twinge of compunction.

Nineteen Holy Coats have gone. The twentieth is the last of the tribe.
While it _pays_ it will be exhibited. When it ceases to pay, the Church
will quietly drop it. By and bye the Church will swear it never kept
such an article in stock.

Superstition dies hard, and it always dies viciously. The ruling passion
is strong in death. A journalist has just been sent to prison for
casting a doubt on the authenticity of this Holy Coat. Give the Catholic
Church its old power again, and all who laughed at its wretched humbug
would be choked with blood.

Protestants, as well as Freethinkers, laugh at Catholic relics. Were
we to quote from some of the old English "Reformers," who carried on a
vigorous polemic against Catholic "idolatry," we should be reproached
for soiling our pages unnecessarily. John Calvin himself, the Genevan
pope, declared that so many samples of the Virgin Mary's milk were
exhibited in Europe that "one might suppose she was a wet nurse or a
cow."

Freethinkers, however, laugh at the miracles of Protestantism, as
well as those of the Catholic Church. They are all of a piece, in the
ultimate analysis. It is just as credible that Christ's Coat would work
miracles, as that Elisha's bones restored a corpse to life, or that
Paul's handkerchiefs cured the sick and diseased. All such things belong
to the same realm of pious imagination. Thus, while the Protestant
laughs at the Catholic, the Freethinker laughs at both.

CHRIST'S COAT, NUMBER TWO.

Jesus Christ is urgently required on earth again, to settle the pious
dispute between Treves and Argenteuil as to which possesses