hen, Mr. Williams' plea is more than personal.
It is really a request that I should judge Christianity, as a great,
ancient, historic system, not by what it has in the main taught and
done, but by what a select body of its professors say and do in the
present generation.

Now this is a plea which I must reject. In the first place, while I
admit it is unfair to judge Christianity by its _worst_ specimens,
I regard it as no less unfair to judge it by its _best_. This is not
justice and impartiality. The Chief Constable of Hull* is probably as
sincere a Christian as Mr. Williams. I have to meet them both, and I
must take them as I find them. The one pays me a compliment, and the
other threatens me with a prosecution; one shakes me cordially by the
hand, the other tries to prevent me from lecturing. The difference
between them is flagrant. But how am I to put Mr. Williams to the credit
of Christianity, and Captain Gurney to the credit of something else?
What _is_ the something else? They both speak to me as Christians; is it
for me to say that the one is a Christian and the other is not? Is not
that a domestic question for the Christians to settle among themselves?
And am I not just and reasonable in declining to take the decision out
of their hands?

* This gentleman was trying to prevent me from delivering
Sunday lectures at Hull under the usual condition of a
charge for admission.

In the next place, since Christianity is, as I have said, not only a
great, but an ancient and historic system, its past _cannot_ be buried,
and should not be if it could. History is philosophy teaching us by
example. Without it the present is meaningless, and the future an
obscurity. Now history shows us that Christianity has been steady and
relentless in the persecution of heresy. We have therefore to inquire
the reason. It will not do to say that persecution is natural to
human pride in face of opposition; for Buddhism, which is older than
Christianity, has not been guilty of a single act of persecution in the
course of twenty-four centuries. Another explanation is necessary. And
what is it? When we look into the matter we find that persecution
has always been justified, nay inculcated, by appealing to Christian
doctrines and the very language of Scripture. Unbelief was treason
against God, and the rejection of Christ was rebellion. They were more
than operations of the intellect; they were movements of the will--not
mist