vilest imputations and in pouring out upon the Object of its devotion the vials of their fiercest wrath. How often have these sneered at the scantiness of its resources and the seeming stagnation of its life! How bitterly they ridiculed its origins and, misconceiving its purpose, dismissed it as a useless appendage of an expiring creed! Have they not in their written attacks stigmatized the heroic person of the Forerunner of so holy a Revelation as a coward recanter, a perverted apostate, and denounced the entire range of His voluminous writings as the idle chatter of a thoughtless man? Have they not chosen to ascribe to its divine Founder the basest motives which an unscrupulous plotter and usurper can conceive, and regarded the Center of His Covenant as the embodiment of ruthless tyranny, a stirrer of mischief, and a notorious exponent of expediency and fraud? Its world-unifying principles these impotent enemies of a steadily-rising Faith have time and again denounced as fundamentally defective, have pronounced its all-embracing program as utterly fantastic, and regarded its vision of the future as chimerical and positively deceitful. The fundamental verities that constitute its doctrine its foolish ill-wishers have represented as a cloak of idle dogma, its administrative machinery they have refused to differentiate from the soul of the Faith itself, and the mysteries it reveres and upholds they have identified with sheer superstition. The principle of unification which it advocates and with which it stands identified they have misconceived as a shallow attempt at uniformity, its repeated assertions of the reality of supernatural agencies they have condemned as a vain belief in magic, and the glory of its idealism they have rejected as mere utopia. Every process of purification whereby an inscrutable Wisdom chose from time to time to purge the body of His chosen followers of the defilement of the undesirable and the unworthy, these victims of an unrelenting jealousy have hailed as a symptom of the invading forces of schism which were soon to sap its strength, vitiate its vitality, and complete its ruin.	isa't -isa sa paghahagis sa mukha nito ng pinaka- masasamang paratang at sa pagbubuhos sa Pakay ng pagmamahal nito ng mga botelya ng kanilang pinaka-mabagsik na poot. Gaano kadalas nilang kutyain ang kakapusan ng mga pinagkukunan nito at ang waring hindi umuunlad na pamumuhay nito. Gaano kapait nilang hinamak ang mga pinagmulan nito at, binigyan ng maling kahulugan ang mga layunin nito, pinawalang-halaga ito bilang walang saysay na kadugtong ng isang namamatay na doktrina! Hindi ba sa kanilang nasusulat na mga pagtuligsa ay dinungisan ang dakilang katauhan ng Tagapagpauna ng isang lubhang banal na Rebelasyon, bilang isang duwag na nagtatuwa, isang tao na ganap na tinalikuran ang kanyang pananampalataya, at binatikos ang buong katipunan ng Kanyang napakaraming mga kasulatan bilang walang katuturang bukang-bibig ng isang walang isip na tao? Hindi ba pinili nilang idahilan sa banal na Tagapagtaguyod nito ang pinaka-imbing mga hangarin na maaaring maisip ng isang walang budhing nagpapakana at mangangamkam, at itinuring ang Sentro ng Banal na Kasunduan Niya bilang ang sagisag ng walang-habag na kalupitan, isang nagsusulsol ng kasamaan, at isang kilalang tagapagtaguyod ng pagsasamantala at panghuhuwad? Angnakapag-bubuklod sa daigdig na mga simulain nitong isang patuloy na tumataas na Pananampalataya ay paulit-ulit na binatikos ng mga walang lakas na kalaban bilang likas na may kakulangan, ipinahayag na ang sumasaklaw sa lahat na panukala ay ganap na hindi kapani-paniwala, at ipinalagay na ang nakini-kinitang hinaharap nito, bilang isang walang katotohanang pangitain at walang-alinlangan na panlilinlang. Ang pinagbabatayang mga katotohanan na bumubuo sa doktrina nito ay inilarawan ng mga hangal na naghahangad ng masama dito bilang isang pagkukunwari ng walang-kabuluhang doktrina, ang pampanga-siwaang pamamaraan nito ay kanilang tinanggihang makita ang pagkakaiba mula sa kaluluwa ng Pananampalataya mismo, at ang mga kahiwagaan na iginagalang at itinataguyod ay kinilala nila bilang ganap na pamahiin. Ang simula ng pagkakaisa na isinusulong at pinaninindigan nito at kung saan ito nakikilala ay binigyan nila ng maling kahulugan bilang isang mababaw na pagtatangka sa pagkakapare-pareho, ang paulit-ulit na paggigiit nito sa katotohanan ng halos kahima-himalang pamamaraan ay kanilang hinatulan bilang isang walang kabuluhang paniniwala sa mahika, at ang

77