cease to have any concern with religion, and never was so much piety, so much personal faith or conviction, so much deep individual concern for spiritual things. The wicked one who prowled about seeking whom he might devour, proved to be the living God stirring in his children's hearts the embers of the personal religious life.

It was believed in the olden time that either the Church or the despotic State must undertake the support of the schools. It was a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the malicious demon of ignorance which infested the world. But on the voluntary system, which throws on the people the responsibility of educating themselves, the schools not only increased in numbers but improved in quality; there is better teaching, better discipline, better school architecture and regulation. And so on in other things. We have found that the whole universe is filled with the Living God; that the Living God is not living jealousy, or wrath, or cunning, but living truth and goodness and beneficence. We have learned to see Him in the elements that bring. us health, comfort, prosperity, happiness. We have learned to see Him in the elements which bring discipline, experience, wisdom. We have learned to see Him in air and light, in the fine gases, in muscle, nerve, fibre and tissue, in organs and functions. We have learned to see Him in intelligence and affection, in the glow of aspiration and in the courage of a noble will. We have learned to see Him in the wise economies that administer life, in the knowledge that centuries have built up, in the principles that brace us in our difficulties and solace us in our grief. We have come to the belief that the dreadful thing is to fall out of the hands of the Living God, to fall out of knowledge and reason and truth and charity, to fall out of confidence and trust, to remain so shut up in our narrow houses of belief or custom that we do not know what the Living God is, and are continually fancying that he is living ogre or living devil.

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It is a fearful thing when one who has never questioned his belief first begins to question it, and stepping out of his old

home of Faith, sees what looks like a howling wilderness about him. It is a fearful thing when one who has always dwelt on problems he could master, and has felt perfectly at home with the ordinary questions of his lot, finds himself face to face with problems he cannot master, and gropes about him in the dark for an answer to questions that baffle his intelligence. All experimenting of this kind is a fearful thing-all venture into the land of the unknown, though it has been going on for thousands of years, and has always resulted in the nobleness of mankind. Nothing is so fearful as Novelty in custom or institution. However confident their anticipation of heaven, none are ready to die. But experience teaches us that the fearfulness is for the instant. The momentary shock of the plunge over, a new set of powers comes into play; a new order of satisfactions reveals itself to view; a new and broader existence is disclosed. We come to learn that to live under law, to live justly, healthfully, obediently, trustingly, is the farthest possible from being a fearful thing. The liar, the thief, the traitor, the murderer, would all be the happier for falling into the hands of the Living God. I plead for the substitution of a spirit of quiet repose for a spirit of fear, as we think of the power that holds our destiny in its hands. I plead for a spirit of courage in meeting emergencies, facing difficulties, coming in contact with trials, encountering what seems to be evils, entering upon new and untried paths of life. Let us be sure that there is no demon but the demon of doubt, fear, ignorance, in our own timid bosoms; that out of doors all is light and power.-O. B. Frothingham.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

For myself, I belong to a sect (Baptist). I love it and I honor it. I believe its history to be one of transcendant glory. I believe that the brave men and women who have belonged to it in different ages and in different lands, have stood in the front rank of those who have demanded "soul liberty;" and

at the stake, at the whipping-post, in the prison, everywhere by their blood they have sealed this precious testimony. But I am sometimes afraid that my sect, having passed out from under the harrow of persecution, being no longer a scorned and outcast people, having grown to magnificent proportions. of strength, of culture, of education, of wealth, and of power, are beginning to forget the glorious lessons of the past, and are tempted to build up simply an ecclesiastical structure, and to put their hand of power upon those who wish only to repeat the announcements which our ancestors so gloriously and so bravely made. All church history is but a repetition of this experience, and therefore it comes to pass that in every age this battle must be fought over again. Through eighteen long centuries, now in this land and now in that, now by this people now by that people, now by a resistance to civil tyranny, now by a protest against ecclesiastical despotism, this assertion of the liberty of every man to believe for himself, answering only to God, and not to human tribunals, has been made again and again. I believe that it is made here to-day not in any spirit of wild enthusiasm or distorted fanaticism, but in a calm, earnest, studious, and honest way.

Now, in this land which we call free, in this age which we call glorious, we need not perhaps so much for our own sakes as for the sake of those who shall come after us, to assert the principle which more than two long centuries ago was the very axiom of Protestantism,—the absolute right of every human soul to interpret for itself the whole word of Scripture. No longer do the thunderbolts forged at the Vatican, and hurled by the angry hand of the Pope, excite alarm, but merriment only, on the part of those against whom they are directed. The horrid chambers of the Inquisition are deserted, the dreadful mechanism of torture lies idle and rusted, the whipping-post and the scaffold to-day claim no victims to religious bigotry; but there is a more subtle, and if possible, a more accursed persecution, which, to-day even, is employed by too many who vainly dream they are doing God service. It is the persecu

tion which seeks to brand with odium and write "outcast" upon brave and honest souls, who simply differ from their fellows on questions of intellectual interpretation or doctrinal statement, while their behavior and lives are on the side of justice, of brotherhood, and of love. I think, therefore, that we need to take to ourselves the lessons which are so beauteously illustrated in the life and behavior of Jesus; that it is not what a man says he believes that makes him either to be accepted or to be rejected, but it is what a man does. A life of justice, a life of purity, a life of chasteness, a life of temperance, a life of benevolence, a life that puts out its hand of defence over the weak and the oppressed, a life that dares to defy wealth and power, even, if they are upon the side of wrong,—is not such a life a life of unquestioned righteousness? For myself I hold it to be a cardinal and vital dogma, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Saviour of the world. I believe him to be God incarnated, manifested in flesh. When I look upon him stretched upon the Cross of Calvary, when I behold that crown of thorns, those wounded hands and feet, that side pierced by the cruel foeman's spears, my soul sees there my vicarious atonement and sacrifice, and by the shedding of that blood I believe my sin to be pardoned. That, to my soul, is a profound, deep, earnest, and absorbing belief. But if any other man judge differently, I am not constituted an ecclesiastical tribunal to try him, or to pronounce a verdict of condemnation against him. I think of what Jesus himself said, “Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth.". I recollect that the severest and bitterest rebukes which passed the lips of the gentle Nazarene were those which were hurled at the scribes and pharisees who sat at Moses' seat, who wore broad phylacteries, who loved the uppermost seats in the synagogue, who paid tithes of mint, anise, and cummin, and yet who devoured widows' houses, and forgot the wider law of justice and love. I transfer that lesson to to-day, and think that it is not the outward ecclesiastical relationships which men hold that will save

them, or cause them to perish, but that vital communion between God and their own souls is the one thing necessary to salvation.

This much we need, it seems to me,—a more earnest, a more profound, a more devout and hearty work in our day and land, to save from the woes and suffering, that do encompass them about, the millions of the children of want. Let us not be so industrious for the erection of gorgeous church edifices, for the devising of elaborate ceremonials, for the defence of ordinances or of doctrines, however needful we may think them to be; but let us be very zealous and careful in our work and errand of mercy to do that which is just and true and right and good. Whether, therefore, a man belong to one sect or another, whether he belong, as St. Francis Xavier, to the old Romish communion, or, as Emanuel Swedenborg, to the Church of the New Jerusalem, or, as the glorious Channing, to a broad and Catholic faith, or whether he belong to no outward ecclesiastic organization whatever, these questions, it seems to me, fade and sink away into insignificance in comparison with this vital and absorbing question. Are we conscious of the deep responsibility that rests upon us during the brief day of our earthly life, that we perform life's errand and mission well? When I myself rest this weary head under the green sod, and some child or beloved friend shall stand there some summer day, when nature weaves a garniture of blossoms above me, and the birds in the boughs of trees overhead are making the air musical, I take God this moment to witness, I would rather have it said of me, "There lies a man who was a friend to the widow and to the orphan, who spoke a word for the slave, for the outcast, and the suffering, and who, in all the works of sweet humanity and righteousness, followed after the footsteps of Jesus," than to have it said of me, "He was mighty in the defence of his faith, and established the dogmas of his sect."

Do you recollect what Garibaldi, the apostle of Italian liberty and unity, said, just before he made his memorable attack upon Rome? He called his soldiers together, and said,