Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/205

 made whole with ceremonies and oils, we no longer believe that we become inheritors of heaven at the touch of a drop of water, as we have ceased to wash ceremonially before the Ordinance, so we have reduced it from a great, mystic Sacrifice and Sacrament to a touching pledge of Christian goodwill and fraternity. Evolution is justified of her children; we have submitted ourselves gladly and joyfully to her benign sway, while the Ritualist still believes that his child receives divine grace from the pat of an old gentleman called a bishop. He has stopped at the stage which was occupied by those simple and devout but ignorant and superstitious peasants of Syria, nineteen hundred years ago.

But superstitions that may have been edifying or at least harmless, "on account of their ignorance," in the mental backwoods of ancient Palestine are to-day in free, Protestant, commercial England a danger and a disgrace; and those who teach such deadly figments must be opposed relentlessly, incessantly, in season