e Quirinal and the
Vatican, the government of Italy and the papal hierarchy. In France the
government of the republic and the Church of Rome are at daggers-drawn.
Before the world-war England and Germany--each claiming to be
Protestant--were looking on askance, irresolute, not as to which side
might be right and which wrong, but on which side "is my bread to be
buttered?" In America, where it was said by the witty Frenchmen we have
fifty religions and only one soup, there are people who think we should
begin to organize to stop the threatened coming of the Pope, and such
like! "O Liberty," cried Madame Roland, "how many crimes are committed
in thy name!" "O Churchism," may I not say, "how much nonsense is
trolled off in thy name!"

I would think twice before trusting the wisest and best of men with
absolute power; but I would trust never any body of men--never any
Sanhedrim, consistory, church congress or party convention--with
absolute power. Honest men are often led to do or to assent, in
association, what they would disdain upon their conscience and
responsibility as individuals. _En masse_ extremism generally prevails,
and extremism is always wrong; it is the more wrong and the more
dangerous because it is rarely wanting for plausible sophistries,
furnishing congenial and convincing argument to the mind of the
unthinking for whatever it has to propose.

III

Too many churches and too much partyism! It is love--love through grace
of God--truth where we can find it--which shall irradiate the life that
is. If when we have prepared ourselves for the life to come love be
wanting, nothing else is much worth while. Not alone the love of man for
woman, but the love of woman for woman and of man for man; the divine
fraternity taught us by the Sermon on the Mount; the religion of giving,
not of getting; of whole-hearted giving; of joy in the love and the joy
of others.

_Who giveth himself with his alms feeds three--
Himself, his hungering neighbor and Me_.

For myself I can truthfully subscribe to the formula: "I believe in God
the Father Almighty; Maker of heaven and earth. And Jesus Christ, his
only Son, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin
Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried;
He descended into hell, the third day He rose again from the dead; He
ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father
Almighty; from thence He shall come to ju