in the name of liberty, but she commands nothing except that toleration and respect which she has herself manifested, and she refuses to take up that burden of individual responsibility which many are too ready to fling on to her shoulders at every turn of the spiritual life.
The right of choice and its duties remain to the individual soul, which has to manifest its loyalty by not cursing that which the Lord has not cursed, and by exercising, in things religious, that temperance and courtesy which are the spiritual counterpart of social good manners. We are not bound to practise all the devotions which the Church declares holy and harmless; but we are bound to restrain our criticism in the spirit of respect for our fellow Christians, and we are also called onto conform to certain general usages under pain of becoming boors in our religious communion. For, though not generally recognized, there are certain faults of the critical spirit which spring rather from want of manners than from want of faith.
Granted, then, the approbation or toleration of the Church, which ensures to certain devotions a general usefulness or, at any rate, harmlessness, and which demands, on our side, at least courtesy and respect, there
