RELIGIOUS TOLERATION.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1346, 9 January 1884, Page 2

RELIGIOUS TOLERATION.

■♦ (Home Paper.) The principle of religious toleration, which in the modern world was be lieved to be established on unassailable foundations, is once more in dispute amongst men. A strange madness, says Senor Castelar, has recently seized the peoples to return from the paths of civilisation to the barbarous times of religious persecution. And there is, unfortunately, no question about the fact. One day Bibles are buriied in pious auto da fe iu the Spanish market place and the next a Freethinker is Hung into gaol in London under a blaspheny law as antiquated as a thumbscrew. Eastern Europe rings with savave melodictions against the Jews, who, on the ! strength of medieval calumnies, are ! abandoned to the vengeance -of i iTutalised mobs. In Madagascar, | French Freethinkers, espousing tlm ! cause of Jesuit pivapagandists, imprison ! English, missionariev; while the j Ministers who despatched Admiral ! Pierre to Tamatave ply the pickaxe ! and crowbar in order to banish the religious orders from France. Last of the authorities of Neushatel, in a Republic once- priding itself upon bein<r the English girl shrine of religious liberty cast an English girl into gaol for no other offence than that of having taken part in a- religious' meeting. No worn! or that Senor Oastelar,' in his exaggerated fashion.

should proclam aloud that " the furies } of religious fancticism which rang the . alarium bell the on the might of St. i Bartholomew and kindled the fires of j the Inquisition in the market place of I Madrid, have once more been let loose on the world."