WHAT IS RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE ?
SIR,—My friend the Dean of Wells asserts the impossibility of o ing the fruits of the Christian conscience without " the system belief and practice to which that conscience owes its existe Passing over the fact that much, or even most, of Christ's teaching comes down from the book of Deuteronomy and the He prophets, the Dean's astonishing assertion would go to prove it is impossible for a Jew, a Buddhist, a Unitarian or an Agn to be a good man. He will find difficulty in gaining the assent his fellow-countrymen to so startling a proposition. On the hand, it is to Christian (or rather ecclesiastical) dogmatic belief humanity owes the unspeakable horrors of mediaeval auto-do-Us well as the shocking attitude of Anglicans in the past to I Catholics, to Quakers and to Nonconformists. Are intolerance obscurantism (not wholly dead, even today) the " fruits of Christian conscience "?
Five men, above all, have influenced for good my own life. was a devout layman: one a Unitarian: two, who were for good Churchmen, died by no means firm in Christian dogmatic be the fifth, who cared for none of these things, was deeply loved all his friends for his fruits of the spirit. I venture to place last four men alongside of St. Francis and the saintly Bishop Kist
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