out 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 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 punishment decreed by 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 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 misguided 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 Constantine 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 towards 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 not only lost no opportunity of indulging themselves 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 Sadducees 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 early disciples, and Saul of Tarsus and others on the day of Pentecost, saw the insufficiency of their own religion, felt the need of a surer guide, and became the followers of Christ; but the mass of the nation were violent and uncompromising in their hostility to the Christian faith. They pursued the infant Saviour from his cradle to Egypt, from Egypt to Nazareth, and from Nazareth to the cross. After having satiated their malignity uponhim, they directed it in all its infuriate madness against his disciples. Stephen, James the son of Zebedee, and James the Just who presided over the Church at Jerusalem, were among the early victims of their rage. Sometimes their violence was expressed in threatening; sometimes in rash and headlong counsels; sometimes in the imprisonment of the Christians; and sometimes in stripes and death. Nor were their persecutions limited to Palestine. Wherever they were scattered throughout the Roman provinces, they became the instigators of those feuds among the populace, and that violence of the magistracy which destroyed so many of the harmless followers of Christ.* The early Christians had no more bitter enemies than the Jews. From the highest seat of power in Jerusa

* Vide Mosheim's Institutes of Ecclesiastical History.

lem, down to the lowest publican who sat at the receipt of custom, the embodied efforts of the nation, both in the Holy Land and out of it, were enlisted against Christianity. There was this semblance of apology for the Jews. The God of Abraham had called them out from among the nations with the view of dissociating them from all the varieties and forms of pagan idolatry, and until the coming of the Messiah, of preserving among them the only remnant of the true religion on the earth. They were early taught by God himself to regard all other nations with. suspicion; to have no intercourse with them; and to prohibit their residence among them until they had first renounced their paganism, and become proselytes to the faith and worship of the true God. It is a lame apology; but like one of their own misguided countrymen, they often "did it ignorantly and in unbelief." They were strongly attached to their own national, religious peculiarities; and yet nothing could be more contrary to the genius of their own religion, than the pride, envy and malignity, with which they arrayed those peculiarities against Christianity. Nothing could be more contrary to the light of their own symbols, prophecies, and law. Nothing could be more contrary to the overwhelming testimony that Jesus was the Son of God. And yet they have ever been an intolerant people, and have extended their intolerance not less to their own countrymen, who renounced the Jewish religion, than to strangers. Wherever they have been in power, they have always been an intolerant people. When Mordecai was prime minister at the Persian Court under the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, "many of the people of the land became Jews, because the fear of the Jews came upon them." The Jews had authority and they exercised it so

effectually, that the Persians professed Judaism through fear. We know too what an iron sceptre their rulers swayed, and under what a reign of terror the nation groaned in subsequent ages. There was no such thing as religious liberty. If any man confessed Christ, he was put out of the synagague;" he was pronounced an outlaw; his property was confiscated; he was denied all the charities of life; his person was put beyond the protection of the government; and the man that killed him was thought to have done God service.

If from the Jews, we turn to the Mahometans, we have the same melancholy picture. Like a furious torrent, the religion of the false prophet laid waste Asia, Africa, and a great part of Europe. It was introduced at a period of the world, when the corruptions of Christianity and the divisions throughout Christendom invited the enterprise of some bold, and ardent mind, and when the customs and passions of men, and the circumstances of the times were easily. made subservient to such a design. The spirit of intolerance also which existed among the Christians proved a favourable event for the advancement of Mahometanism. Justinian had previously commenced his persecutions; he had destroyed the Samaritans in Palestine; and their posterity probably embraced the new religion out of hatred to the Christians, and in consequence of the severe edicts published against them by the Roman emperors. The Roman and Persian monarchies were also on the decline; and Mahomet had discernment enough to turn all these favourable opportunities to his own advantage. It is scarcely necessary to say, that Mahomet boldly professed to convert the nations by the sword. It was one of the main pillars of his system, that paradise