RELIGION. 279 



rection of Our Divine Redeemer, while explaining personal 

 religion. 



Unfortunately, many of our own Church and Protestants who 

 labour among Roman Catholics are often too eager to instruct, 

 beginning with violent abuse of the Roman Church rather than 

 educating their hearers by enlarging on the truths they have been 

 taught and instilling the doctrines of the Gospel, leaving the 

 truth to work, as Elisha did with Naaman. Therefore, such 

 teachers are spoken against by the ecclesiastical authorities, and 

 the people refuse to listen. I could not have distributed a single 

 Gospel with advantage without feeling my way most carefully. 



One point is very praiseworthy in all the sermons I heard — the 

 priests never weary of dilating on the atonement of Our Divine 

 Redeemer as the one ineffable sacrifice necessary for the satis- 

 faction of divine justice and substitutionary for each individual 

 soul, through which alone the sinner can find acceptance with 

 God ; though they do teach that the prayers of departed saints — 

 who should be invoked, as well as those of one's relations and 

 friends who are alive, are of use in obtaining blessings from God. 

 The doctrine of the atonement is, however, one which is often 

 lost sight of in our pulpits ; men refuse to believe in the heinous- 

 ness of sin, refuse to believe that the justice of a perfectly holy 

 God requires full satisfaction for sin, and, by rationalistic arguments 

 derived from degraded human reason, dwell only on the father- 

 hood and love of God to mankind. There are two rocks, Scylla 

 and Charybdis, against either of which all Christian people may 

 make shipwreck of their faith ; they stand one at each end of the 

 line of intellectual thought. The first is Formalism, the second 

 Rationalism. The former is the outcome of a kind of parasitic 

 religion, handing over the conscience to the direction of another, 

 and considering that the individual has no right to think for himself 

 and examine the doctrines whether they be of God, or else think- 

 ing that a feeble acquiescence in certain dogmas and the per- 

 formance of certain forms and ceremonies is all that is necessary. 

 The second phase is the result of revulsion of feeling from the 

 other extreme, not only refusing to listen to the voice of the 

 Church, the directions of the Bible, and the dictates of conscience, 

 but setting up their personal puny and corrupt intellect as the 



