too, anonymous,) in the columns of the public prints.  My friends, these are not God’s weapons.  Not such is Ithuriel’s magic spear, the very touch of which unmasks falsehood.  This is to try to cast out Satan by Satan, to make evil worse by fighting it with fresh evil.  Oh, my friends, if there is one counsel which I would press on all here more earnestly than another, it is this—­never, never, howsoever great may be the temptation, to indulge in anonymous attacks on any human being.  No man has a right to do it who prays daily to his Father in heaven, Lead us not into temptation.  For it is to lead oneself into temptation, and that too sore to resist; into the temptation to say something which one dare not say, and ought not to say, were one’s name known; the temptation to forget not only the charity of Christians, but even the courtesies of civilized life; and to shoot, from behind the safe hedge of anonymousness, coward and envenomed shafts, of which we should be ashamed, did the world know that they were ours; of which we shall surely be ashamed in that great day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed.  I speak strongly:  but only because I know by bitter experience the terrible truth of my own words.

And consider, my friends, can any good result come from handling sacred matters with such harsh and fierce hands as they have been handled of late?  For ourselves, such evil tempers only excite, irritate, blind us:  they prevent our doing justice to the opposite side—­(I speak of all parties)—­they put us into an unwholesome state of suspicion, and tempt us to pass harsh judgments upon men as righteous, and perhaps far more righteous, than ourselves:  they stir up our pride to special plead our case, to make the best of our own side, and the worst of our opponents’:  they defile our very prayers; till, when we ought to be praying God to bless all mankind, we catch ourselves unawares calling on Him to curse our enemies.

For those who are without—­for the infidel, the profligate, the careless—­oh, what a scandal to them!  What an excuse for them to blaspheme the holy name whereby we are called, and ask, as of old, ’Is this then the Gospel of Peace?  See how these Christians hate one another!’

While for the young, oh, my friends, what a scandal, again, to them!  If you had seen (as I have) pious parents destroying in their own childrens’ minds all faith, all reverence for holy things, by mixing themselves up in religious controversies, and indulging by their own firesides in fierce denunciations of men no worse than themselves;—­ if you will watch (as you may) young people taking refuge, some in utter frivolity, saying, ’What am I to believe?  When religionists have settled what religion is, it will be time enough for me to think of it:  meanwhile, let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die;’—­and others, the children of strong Protestant parents, taking refuge in the apostate Church of Rome, and saying, ’If Englishmen do