Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/189

 ancestors, the men who judged and put to death Charles Stuart.

No: "the letter killeth," and it is the spirit and not the letter of the Grand Old Book that we follow in these and in all other instances. We are the heirs of the ages, the products of the grand process of Evolution, and it is thus that we may claim to be the true and earnest disciples of the Inspired Volume. Should we welcome the claim of a Primitive Man, if such a being existed now, to be the only True Man, to be our superior in manhood? Surely not; we should drive the hairy and apelike creature from us with contempt and disgust; and with the same feelings we repel the claims of Tories and Sacerdotalists to be the true interpreters of the Sacred Text.

By analogy, then, you will easily conjecture that as our ethic is evolutionary so also are our dogmatic and our liturgic. Our great dogma, if I may say so, is that dogmadogmas [sic] do not greatly matter, or in the words of Pope: