plication to
this. The true parasite presents us with an organism so much more
degraded in all its parts, that its lessons may well be reserved until
we have paved the way to understand the deeper bearings of the subject.

The spiritual principle to be illustrated in the meantime stands thus:
_Any principle which secures the safety of the individual without
personal effort or the vital exercise of faculty is disastrous to moral
character._ We do not begin by attempting to define words. Were we to
define truly what is meant by safety or salvation, we should be spared
further elaboration, and the law would stand out as a sententious
common-place. But we have to deal with the ideas of safety as these are
popularly held, and the chief purpose at this stage is to expose what
may be called the Parasitic Doctrine of Salvation. The phases of
religious experience about to be described may be unknown to many. It
remains for those who are familiar with the religious conceptions of the
masses to determine whether or not we are wasting words.

What is meant by the Parasitic Doctrine of Salvation one may, perhaps,
best explain by sketching two of its leading types. The first is the
doctrine of the Church of Rome; the second, that represented by the
narrower Evangelical Religion. We take these religions, however, not in
their ideal form, with which possibly we should have little quarrel, but
in their practical working, or in the form in which they are held
especially by the rank and file of those who belong respectively to
these communions. For the strength or weakness of any religious system
is best judged from the form in which it presents itself to, and
influences the common mind.

No more perfect or more sad example of semi-parasitism exists than in
the case of those illiterate thousands who, scattered everywhere
throughout the habitable globe, swell the lower ranks of the Church of
Rome. Had an organization been specially designed, indeed, to induce the
parasitic habit in the souls of men, nothing better fitted to its
disastrous end could be established than the system of Roman
Catholicism. Roman Catholicism offers to the masses a molluscan shell.
They have simply to shelter themselves within its pale, and they are
"safe." But what is this "safe?" It is an external safety--the safety of
an institution. It is a salvation recommended to men by all that appeals
to the motives in most common use with the vulgar and the superstitiou