Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1899-06-02

blessed lessons Of submission. tenderness,
long-suifering, charity. which lie came to
teach. But Ills doctrine of the worth
and dignity Of redeemed men was like
leaven deposited in the corrupt mass of
human society; and in time the whole
world would be leavened politically, as
in other ways.
The process has been advancing for
centuries; it is still going on. We
Americans owe much To il; more per-
haps than any other nation in the world.
Ii has, indeed, been said that "if despot-
ism has ceased among us, liberty is still
confronted by the Statutc-hook." OF
course il is. How could il he otherwiSe?
The objection assumes that between law
and liberty there is some sort of neces-
sary antagonism. We know unhappily
that abroad this opposition is some
times taken for granted. There are
some countries in which order and lib
erty are treated as implacable enemies
in which order is only secured by the
confscation of every personal liberty; in
which liberty only raises its head, if it
does raise its head. amid the ruins of
order and law. We may well thank
God that He has spared us these trials.
When you, my friends, who represent
the Grand Army of the Republic were
engaged in the great struggle which
maintained the integrity of this nation.
you represented two great causes; the
sacred interests of law no less than the
sacred interests of liberty. Law is the
guarantee of liberty. not its enemy; lib
erty is the enthusiastic ally of law. Each
rests upon fact which is Divine in its
origin; liberty on the moral majesty of
individual human life; law on the Di-
vinely-implanted social instincts, and, as
a consequence, on the Divine origin of
society, and on the necessity of uphold
ing and protecting society, hy rule or
law, against selfish passion. TO crush
true liberty in the name is to SOW the
seed, sooner or later. of social insurrec-
tion. Todepreciate or insult law in the
name of liberty is to make of liberty Il
Icloke Of maliciousness, and to insure its
ruin. Nothing can he more deplorahle
than any conflict between these sacred
principles. An old psalmiSt reviewing
the tyrannical administration of law by
the Judges of Israel, exclaims that "all
the foundations of the earth are out of
course" The whole fabric totters to its
base when there is II conflict between
human law advocating order, and Divine
law enthroned in conscience; when law
and the highest liberty are foes. To
avoid such a misfortune must be the aim
of all wise legislators; to deprecate it
the heartfelt prayer of all good citizens.
II.
Christ has also given men intellectual
freedom. He enfranchised them by the
gift of truth. He gave truth i'll its full
ness; truth not merely relative and
provisional. but absolute and final. Tn,
al II, ,,,,. IA, I,,,uo,, ;r+,ll.,+ ,,,nu a,,
shaved. 1t was enslaved either to de
grading superstition, or to false and one
sided PHILOSOPHERS. Man must think
about himself, his place in the universe
his destiny, his relation to higher Be
ing. And if he has not truth at hand
he makes the best he can of error. He
may change 1.-The glory of the mcorrupt-
ible God into an image made like unto
corruptible man." Still that is better
than nothing, He may listen to a
teacher who, "promising him liberty, IL
all the while himself the servant of cor
ruption." Yet that is more endurablt
than utter Silence. Mans interest ii
the great problems around him betray'
him to his intellectual foes unless he
has embraced the Truth; unless the
Truth, in its greatness, has made hin
free.
1t is undeniabe that the religion o
Christ gave an immense impulse to hu
man thought. 1t made him think a!
they had never thought before. Ii
made them feel what it is to have with
in this puny body a spirit which takes
the measure of the spheres. Whel
Christ, i'll all the glory of His GodheaC
and His Manhood, had enthroned Him
self in the soul, He taught men to thinl
worthily of the greatness of God and o
the greatness of man, notwithstanding
mans weakness and corruption. llt
freed men from all the narrow crampins
, influence of local philosophers, of loca
teachers, OF petty schemes and theorle
for classes and races. He led men on
into the great highways of thought
, where, if they would, they might know
, the Universal Father manifested in Iii,
Blessed Son, as the Author of all Exist
, ence, as its Object, and as its End.
, Here we are asked whether, as mat
+ ter of fact, Christianity does not cram]
intellectual liberty by insisting upon TIN
a necessity of believing Christian doctrine
! whether dogmatic Creeds, for instance
p are not hostile to a mental liberty?
: Certainly our Lord has given us
q body of Truth, which we can, if we like