Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/245

 would, we fancy, be so harmonious that it would have no influence to raise men and women to think.

With "The Master Christian" the reader has to think all the time. It is a sermon of great power, and the text of it is supplied, as it should be, by the fair preacher. It will be remembered that in the year 1900 the late Dr. St. George Mivart, a priest of the Church of Rome, was inhibited by His Eminence Cardinal Vaughan, on account of certain scientific works which were displeasing to the Church. Shortly afterwards Dr. Mivart died and the Romish Church even denied him religious rites of burial. In an "In Memoriam" note appended to her "Open letter to Cardinal Vaughan" on this subject, Marie Corelli wrote: "In the name of the all-loving and merciful Christ, whose teachings we, as Christians, profess to follow, it is necessary to enter a strong protest against this barbarous act in a civilized age, and to set it down beside the blind stupidity which arraigned glorious Galileo, and the fiendish cruelty which supported Torquemada. For the words of the Divine Master are a command to Churches as well as to individuals: 'If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses!'"