The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1900-10-09
Miscellaneous.
CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERTY.

libertieslto Christ and have rather
appealed to Caesar. Christ brought
a Gospel that demanded freedom,
absolute and all comprehensive, and
though it wanted all manifestation
offoroe it has wrought with a Power
like unto which no armies of Caesar
ever knew.
Not only so, but the great strug-
giles forGberty have been dominantly
Christian. The fire long smolder-
ing burst forth in Martin Luther in
the Reformation, which though re-
ligious in form and purpose had a
thorough effect upon civil affairs
as true religion ought. Cromwell
and his soldiers went into war for a
religious cause and fought as Chris
tians to a consummatiOn, to which
modern civil liberty is most largely
owed. Later on, it was no accident
that Roger Williams, whose name IS
dear to Baptists, felt the need equally
of civil and religious liberty and set
about to obtain both. Ae had per
ceived that one could not live with
out the other.
This land was kept, so it seems,
from the foundation of the world,
for Freedom. The American con
tinent undoubtedly was discovered
centuries before Columbus sailed,
but as if by providential design the
earlier discovery was not made avail
able in that earlier day when despot-
ism and virtual idolatry rooted in
the hearts of the people would have
been likewise rooted in the fOunda-
tions of any nations whose standards
might have been lifted up on these
shores. The early story of our
country is the story of religious
people; it's early foundations were
religious, Christian foundations. To
it's children now the names of PLri-
tan and Pilgrim, HuguenOt and HOl-
lander, Quaker, Dissenter, Episco-
palian and Covenanter T familiar
not simply as colonist, o yet as re-
ligionists, but mainly as religious
peoples who, in one form or another,
soon of late, loved liberty and
made way for it here. From them
the American Republic has derived
it's life-a life whose breath is free
dom.
So, then, Christianity is the
mother of liberty. Where u reli-
gion goes freedom must come; and
if it fail our religion will withdraw
or degenerate.
So. then, our Nation was born of
Christianity unto Liberty. We
have a nation whose foundation and
hope is freedom, religious intellec-
tual civil. This is the heritage the
fathers left US. Let us look we'll to
it. To.have liberty is nothing if we
make no use of it. To have the
name of liberty and the form with
out the spirit is shame in itself and
sure token of disaster.
The average man thinks mostly of
civil liberty, his relation to the gov
ernment-equality of responsibility
and opportunity, freedom from re-
straint in the pursuit of happiness.
It's concrete form is presented to him
in the ballot. But civil liberty is
but one of the forms of Freedom.
Give a man the right to vote and by
any means deny him the privilege of
thinking or speaking, and you have
a slave. Give one the right to speak
and deny him the right to worship
God according to the will of his soul,
and you have but little better than
an animal. On the other hand, deny
a man civil rights, and you have
taken the first step toward inhibit-
ing his intellectual and religious
privileges. In a word, Freedom is
absolute and restraint in one re-
spect is fundamental and affects all
others. The defenders of soul free
dom must defend civil freedom, and
likewise must they defend intellec-
tual freedom. When we say this is
a free country, we do not simply
mean that we have civil freedom
but that Freedom herself lives here,
and that all her children shall be
fOstered.
There are limitations. Liberty is
not license. One man has no right
to superior privileges. That imme-
diately undoes the spirit of liberty.
Anarchy and anarchists, traitors and
outlaws are without the pale; but