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

These are to intellectual liberty what
law is to social liberty. They protect,
they do not cramp it. They furnish a
fixed point, from which thought may
take wing. They do not enchain thought.
If man would think steadily, fruitfully,
he must begin with some solid, ascer-
tanned truth. You cannot survey the
surface of the ocean while you are toss
ing upon the wave. You must plant
your foot upon a rock in order to COM
mand. from a basis which is fixed. sthe
scene which is perpetually shifting
around you. To plunge off the rock i'll
to the waves is to surrender this vantage
ground. 1t is with the Greed as with
the law. If you repudiate law, you may
become the slaves of any individual will.
If YOU repudiate the Creed YOU may
become the slaves of any petty intellect
ual dogmatizer. In rejecting the Greed
you leave the broad, public highways of
Christian Faith, the many-sided and
comprehensive thought Of the Universal
Church, for the cramped and morbid
speculations of individual thinkers. You
abandon yourself to all the petty tyran-
nies. to all the inSolemt usurpations of
private thought, to all the fonpulas OF
individual and human masters, from
which Christ our Lord has willed to
make us free.
1t would be a mistake to tear up the
Constitution of the United States in the
supposed interests of freedom. because it
recognizes the obligation of law; it is al
so mistake to mutilate or to disuSe
the Greed of the Universal Church, under
the idea of securing mental liberty. The
Greed does but state what every we'll in
formed and faithful Christian wishes to
believe. Christian doctrine, | repeat, is
to mans highest life of thought what
law is to his social life to reject the
one in the interests of the other is to
turn mental liberty into cloke of mali
ciousness.
Lastly Christ has made men morally
free. He has broken the chains which
| fettered the human will. and has restored
to it its buoyancy and power. Man was
morally free in Paradise; lie became ell
Slaved, i'll consequence of that act of dis
obedience which we name the FAN.
| Man then forfeited the robe of grace
which had secured the beauty and per-
| lection of his nature in its earlier and
happier stage: he could not transmit to
his descendants that which he had HIM
self lost Mans will lost its spring, its
superiority to circumstance, its indie
pendence of passion, its lofty unlikeness
to mere instinct Man fell more and
more fatally under the dominion of ma
ture; under the dominion of his senses
enslaved by nature. He became by de-
grees what :. Paul, in the Epistle to the
Romans. describes him as having he.
come. He was slave; because the
sovereign power within ihim, his will,
had lost the secret of its freedom, and
was itself enslaved.
How was he to be enfranchised There
came to him One Who said, If the Son
shall make YOU free, We shall be free in,
deed" What had been lost was to be
more than regained in Christ. Not
merely was the penalty of old trans
gressions to he paid, so that man was re-
deemed from a real captivity; but the
will was to he reinvigorated by a Heaven
sent force or grace. once more placing it
in true harmony with the law of mans
life. OF this $. Paul speaks in saying
that when Christians We're made free
from sin they became the servants OF
slaves of righteousness. There is nC
Oregon territory" in the moral world
no tract of unoccupied neutral grounC
which runs between the frontiers of the
empire of Christ and of the realm o.
evil. They are conterminous to eacl
other; and to have been rescued from
one is to become at once a subject of it,
antagonist.
Here it is objected that moral free
dom is not worth having if it is only
service after all. You talk of freedom,
men say, but you mean rule, You
mean restrictions upon action; restric
tions upon inclination; restrictions upol
speech. You mean obligations; obliga
tions to work; obligations to self-disci
pline; obligations to sacrifice self t.
others; obligations to all the details o
Christian duty.
My friends, you are right; certainl
we do. A Christian lives under Sy>