CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE IS THE BASIS OF CIVIL FREEDOM.

By Christian principle I mean more than the presence of Christian creeds. I mean the vital power of Christian religion, the live action of fundamental and distinctive Christian truth on human character, conduct, relations, and institutions an action both direct and reflex; first renovating and molding the man and the men, then slowly but surely pervading and transforming the notions, the habits, and the whole organism of society, till the amplest possibilities shall be given to all and to each. And I maintain that in the entire exclusion of the light and heat of Christian principle from a nation's life there will be no general social condition deserving the name of freedom; in its mixed and imperfect prevalence liberty will be mixed and imperfect, rising or falling like some celestial barometer with the destiny or levity of the Christian atmosphere in which the nation has its life; and its perfect prevalence, could it ever be seen on earth, would constitute "the perfect law of liberty." In short, just in proportion as true Christianity is inwrought into a nation from center to circumference, in just that proportion let the nation call itself what it will will there be general and genuine freedom in that land.

I. The presence of Christian principle is needful to qualify men for the outer state of freedom; the presence of it in some good degree, not necessarily its universal prevalence or absolute predominance. For when some active portion of a land's inhabitants, as in

Japan, have felt the power of vital religion, and that but imperfectly, its diffused influence is soon reflected and refracted throughout the laws and customs. Its warmth and light are, like those of the noonday sun, felt in the shade, and even when intercepted by thick clouds, consigning no portion of the land to midnight darkness or perpetual frost.

Christ's gospel has come to give mankind a right notion of liberty itself. What follies have been chased and what crimes have been perpetrated under that sacred name! He who visits the narrow dungeon of Carmes in Paris may (or might) read the lamentations which three noble women once inscribed with the points of their scissors and the teeth of their combs on the walls of the prison; and among them these sad words: "O liberty! when wilt thou cease to be an idle name?" For it was in the name of liberty that Josephine and her two friends lay in that dungeon in 1794, while in the name of liberty Paris was deluged in blood.

One of the commonest abuses of the name and the notion, almost universal aside from strong Christian influence, is to confound the love of liberty with the burning hatred of outer control and the fierce following of unfettered impulse and all-grasping greed. That was the freedom of the northern hordes. It was the

spirit of the chevalier. It was once the liberty of the southern gentleman. It is the liberty which the despot and the mob and the oligarchy alike contend for. Extremes meet. What a burlesque scene it was at the

great congress of Vienna, when on the plea of "security and independence," of "justice and equity," three of the "high contending parties" entered into a secret treaty against the other two, and when the five great despotic powers jointly made their solemn announcement of "uniting all their efforts for the preservation of the general peace against the disturber of the world" while they proceeded to dismember Saxony and Poland, and, as the historian caustically remarks, "in the midst of a congress assembled for the general pacification of the world a million of armed men were retained around their banners ready for mutual slaughter." The mockery of the scene was surpassed only by the greater one that ended it in consternation, the apparition from Elba of "the man of destiny' hastening on to Waterloo with the stirring appeal to his soldiers to be "the deliverers of their country." Even more extraordinary, if possible, was the spectacle in our country a quarter of a century ago, when the representatives of eleven states, loudly proclaiming themselves to be "freemen," rose to arms for "equality and justice" an equality and justice which consisted in the claim of some four hundred thousand men to hold four million men in bondage.

On the other hand, the reckless mob strives for the abolition of law, of right of property, and of the restraints of passion, as the great boon of freedom. So Shakespeare read that spirit long ago. "Your captain," said the rebel Cade, "is brave and vows reformation. . . . The three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops.

All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And, when I am king, as king I will be, there shall be no money. All shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me, their lord." And when they bring before him the clerk of Chatham, guilty of the ability "to read and write and cast accounts," "Away with him!" is the sentence; "hang him with his pen and inkhorn about his neck." Such was largely the aim of English chartism, of French socialism, such, too largely, of the Irish land league, and far worse, diabolically so, of Russian nihilism and American anarchism. Of the possibility of equal rights and unequal possessions, of the duty of reciprocity, of sacred obligations, it has no conception. "What might be a fair rent to pay?" asked Mr. Sheahey the other day of an Irish crowd. "Nothing!" was the answer, received with loud laugher and uproarious applause.

In the interval between the French revolution or convulsion of 1848 and the despotism of Louis Napoleon, France was covered with a network of secret associations, lacquered over with the name of "republican solidarity," pledged by horrid oaths to unlimited crime, even to the assassination of father or brother in obedience to orders. Under the "democratic" name it was an uprising against all authority and social order, that atheism and brutality might renew the orgies of 1793. "Fifty of us will leave Geneva for Montelimart," wrote Peysson Antoine to Staupany,

his dear brother of the Union; "we wish to massacre all the aristocrats and the black robes, and to burn all the châteaux; no quarter, no pity for those wretches and the monster Bonaparte; we must assassinate and poison them." Children imbibed the spirit Iwith their mother's milk. A little fellow of six at Surgy waked at midnight and called for his father, but recollecting himself he added: "I will wait for him. patiently, because he has gone to kill the rich citizens." And a young mother at Tairnay had a way of asking her eighteen-months boy before a circle of socialists: "Tin, Tin, what is it they will do to the aristocrats?" The infant immediately drew his hand rapidly across his neck, to indicate that it was thus they would cut their throats, while the spectators applauded and the mother covered him with kisses. In December, 1851, flagrant with red caps and cravats these men had begun their bloody work. Their first acts were the pillage of local treasuries, the burning of public archives, registers and title deeds of property, abuse of women, the murder of priests, and sometimes torture of soldiers. "Here is a proprietor!" shouted one as he fired a death shot at Bernard Maury; and one of their own number who wore a dress coat lost his life from his blunder. It was mercy to France and to mankind when they were crushed out by five hundred thousand soldiers, though wielded by the heavy hand of Louis Napoleon. Such a multitude is incapable of any government but a despotism.

Worse yet, if possible, is the present Russian upheaval. It is the struggle of a diabolic Samson,