Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/86

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futile and barbarous. There is nothing in Christ's pure and noble teaching that can endorse so unholy a spirit of intolerance,—one too, which is calculated to give the bitterest pain to the living friends and relations of the so coarsely-insulted dead, and to breed in them a relentless hostility to the Church and its representatives. For the poorest erring human creature that ever turned over the pages of the New Testament, knows that such conduct is not Christ-like, inasmuch as Christ had nothing but the tenderest pity, pardon and peace for the worst sinner at the last moment. When death steps in to close all accounts, it behoves man to be more than merciful to his brother man. "For if ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses."

Still fresh in the minds of many must be the un-*Christian conduct of the late Cardinal Vaughan in denying the rites of Christian burial to the venerable Dr. St. George Mivart. Dr. St. George Mivart was a man of science whose theories did not agree with the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, and as he belonged ostensibly to that form of faith, one may call him, if one so chooses, a bad Catholic. But when it is remembered that within quite recent days, so-called "Christian" priests in Servia have given their solemn benediction to the assassins of the late King and Queen of that country, it is somewhat difficult to understand or appreciate the kind of "religion" that blesses murderers and regicides, yet refuses burial to a modern scientist who, as far as his intellectual powers allowed him, was working for the good and the wider instruction of the human race. At the time of the "inhibition" and sub-