conscience, and heart, which through divine grace the soul enjoys, when she breaks the bonds of her iniquity and possesses the liberty of the children of God. It is to be no longer the servant of sin; no longer the slave of passion; no longer in bondage to vanity, pride, self and the world; but to be the loyal and happy subject of the divine government, the renovated citizen of the commonwealth of Israel, and the servant of that Divine Master, whose every requisition is a benefit, whose every command is a promise, and to whose service every sacrifice becomes a favour, every act of self-denial a blessing. Such a man is free-free every where; free in solitude-free in the midst of the world-free in his abundance-free in his poverty-free in life-free in death-always free"free forever, because he is forever with God."

11*

LECTURE V.

THE SCRIPTURES THE FOUNDATION OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE.

Having at our last opportunity expressed a few thoughts in relation to the influence of the Bible upon civil liberty and human governments, I propose to devote the present lecture to a consideration of the influence it exerts upon religious liberty and the rights of conscience. The subject is one of no common magnitude. Who, had he no other alternative, would not cheerfully consent to become the vassal of the most despotic government on the earth, where the rights of conscience were respected, than the citizen of the freest republic, where these rights are denied? Of all human rights, the rights of conscience are the most sacred and inviolate. Civil liberty relates to things seen and temporal, religious liberty to things unseen and eternal; civil liberty relates to the body, religious liberty to the soul; and which may be the

more readily dispensed with, no honest and virtuous mind can be long in deciding.

By religious liberty, I mean the right of every man to adopt and enjoy whatever opinions he chooses on religious subjects, and to worship the Supreme Being according to the dictates of his own conscience, without any obstruction from the law of the land. Religious toleration is the allowance of religious opinions and modes of worship, when different from those established by law. Religious liberty disclaims all right of law to control men in their opinions and worship. Religious toleration implies the existence and the modified exercise of power in such control; religious liberty implies that no such power exists, and none such is assumed. The most perfect religious liberty exists in that community, where there is no such thing as toleration, because there is no need of it. None desires, or can conceive of a greater degree of religious liberty than that which exists under a government, where one man, and one religious denomination, has as good a right as another, to the free and unobstructed enjoyment of its creed and worship.

If we mistake not, this greatest and most inalienable of all human rights is one of the last that has been respected by civil governments, and has found a refuge only in the well-defined principles and mild auspices of the Christian dispensation. On how many a page of pagan history, do you find the melancholy fact recorded of men who

were condemned to the hemlock and the flames, because they would not worship at the shrine of idol gods? The decree of the proud Nebuchadnezzar, that "whosoever falleth not down and worshippeth the golden image that he had set up, should be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace," was an ancient and very common mode of punishment among the oriental nations, inflicted on those who would not worship their idols. Mountains of flame have ascended to heaven, and rivers of blood have been poured upon the earth, as offerings on the altar of a malignant, or mis guided intolerance. From the time that Antiochus laid waste the Holy Land, and depopulated the city of Jerusalem, to the destruction of the infants of Bethlehem by Herod; from the resurrection of the Saviour, to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; from the destruction of Jerusalem, to the accession of Contantine to the throne of the Roman empire; the prediction has been most fearfully fulfilled, "There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought, and the dragon fought, and his angels."

The limits of a single lecture do not allow me to speak at length of the spirit of intolerance, which has in various ages of the world been the fruitful source of so much misery and crime. Not volumes merely, but libraries have been written without exhausting the mournful theme. Jews, Mahometans, Christians and pagans have all, though not always with the same ardour and phrensy,

been to a greater or less degree, involved in this miserable warfare.

Intolerance toward the Christian faith was early expressed by the Jews, at the very birth of Christianity. As a nation, they were distinguished for their spiritual pride and bigotry, and regarded other nations with a haughty superciliousness, which easily matured to malignity and persecution. Though at the time when our blessed Lord appeared in the flesh, Judaism was in the last stages of decay; though it had the form of godliness, and was destitute of its power, and had indeed become a sort of practical infidelity; it summoned and collected all its remaining vigour to oppose the gospel of the Son of God. Though it was split up into a great variety of sects and parties; yet fearful of the influence of Christianity, jealous of its power, trembling for their own prerogative, the Jewish priests and rulers lost no opportunity of indulging themselves, not only in the extremes of contumely and abuse against the Christians, but did not hesitate to persecute them to the death. The Pharisees were formalists; the Saducees were infidels; the Essenes were enthusiasts and mystics-deeply imbued with the Philosophy of the Platonic School, and regarding even their own law as a mere allegorical system of mysterious truths. But like Herod and Pontius Pilate, all these jarring sects forgot their mutual and minor alienations in their absorbing enmity to the gospel of Christ. Many of them indeed, like the