First, our doctrine of political freedom is not a visionary abstraction. It is a belief which is based in long and bitter experience, which is thought out by shrewd intelligence. It is the sober conviction that, in a society pledged to self-government, it is never true that, in the long run, the security of the nation is endangered by the people. Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish.
Freedom is always wise.
That is the faith, the experimental faith, by which we Americans have undertaken to live. Civilization is not a burden. It is an opportunity. The world would be astonished if it new how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete skeptics in religion. It can do truth no service to blind the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected the Christian faith.