To The Inflamed And Excited Worshippers, A
Heretic Was The Enemy Of The Crucified Saviour, A Jew Was His Murderer,
A Moor Was His Reviler.
A Protestant wore to their bloodshot eyes the
semblance of the torturer who had mocked and scourged the meek Redeemer,
who had crowned his guileless head with thorns, who had pierced and
slain him.
The rack, the gibbet, and the stake were not enough to glut
the pious hate this priestly trickery inspired. It was not enough that
the doubter's life should go out in the blaze of the crackling fagots,
but it must be loaded in eternity with the curses of the faithful.
Is there not food for earnest thought in the fact that faith in Christ,
which led the Puritans across the sea to found the purest social and
political system which the wit of man has yet evolved from the tangled
problems of time, has dragged this great Spanish people down to a depth
of hopeless apathy, from which it may take long years of civil tumult to
raise them? May we not find the explanation of this strange phenomenon
in the contrast of Catholic unity with Protestant diversity? "Thou that
killest the prophets!" - the system to which this apostrophe can be
applied is doomed. And it matters little who the prophets may be.
THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE OF CERVANTES
In Rembrandt Peale's picture of the Court of Death a cadaverous shape
lies for judgment at the foot of the throne, touching at either
extremity the waters of Lethe.
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