That they that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in

truth.

That He is our Father in Heaven.

(2.) OF MAN.

That he is our brother, and to him is due the love that we entertain for self. That evil is to be overcome of good; which must lead and is leading on to the suppression of all cruel punishments, and the end of wars, the establishment of schools of reform for criminals and to the education of all classes, and the realization of perfect liberty and equality among men; which must result in the complete development of human nature until man is become perfect-like a beautiful and ripe apple, or a blooming rose-nothing wanting, having risen "unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

Thus the "signs of times" indicate to us the church of the future, when speculative theology will no longer engage the attention of mankind-but the practical and plain doctrines of Christianity—that no man can misunderstand-about which there is no dispute-shall have become the bond of union, and all will be "one," and the prayer of Jesus will be fully and completely answered. The Savior said:

"Neither pray I for these alone; but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as thou Father art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us,

and the glory which Thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one, I in them, and Thou in me; that they may be perfect in one."

For, if the petitions of Jesus be not answered, can we hope that our prayers may ascend to the throne of the Father? and if this prayer (or, rather, prophesy,) receive an ansyer and fulfillment, must not then, the unity of all Christians be accomplished?—not made one, as in the dark ages, by fire and faggot; but cemented together by the spirit of God, dwelling in the soul; for if we "love one another, God

dwelleth in us."

That the world is becoming Christianized is evidenced in the sympathy and practiial charity of to-day for the unfortdaates. The relief sent to burnt-up Chicago, the abolition of capital punishment in our own State, the passage of laws for the protection of the poor drunkard, and his wife and little ones, instead of his imprisonment and degradation, and the impoverishment of his family by fines heaped upon Lim for his weakness and inability to resist temptation. Christianity is the "law of kindness" in full force. When all our laws evidence love, and sorrow, and pity for the unfortunate, and erring, and sinful, then will the leaven of Christianity have begun to work in the hearts of our people; but as long as we entertain the idea that Christianity is a system of cold, abstract theology--to be assented to by the intellect; and that he is a true christian rho believes certain theories, and is "sound in the faith," or belief of "Trinity," etc., and is punctual in going to church, and taking sacrament, and regular in prayer, though cruel and bitter towards those who do not believe as he does; ready to persecute and injure his neighbor, waɔ, he thinks, is "sending souls to hell," by his erronious "belief;" hindering him from securing work and earning bread for his little ones--I say, as long as we entertain these cold ideas, and cruel and bigoted notions-though punctual in rites and prayers, are we in the condition of those of whom Jesus said:

"Woe unto you scribes, pharisees, hypocrites; for you pay tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith. * * * Behold I send unto

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you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city."

But I thank God that these bigoted notions belong now only to the ignorant; and the prevalence of our free school system for a few generations, will drive away this blight from our land, and the people will come to see that Christianity is LOVE TO GOD AND LOVE TO MAN; and not the worshipping of theories and creeds.

"Creed" was the Baal of the idolatry of our fathers. Creeds of sectarianism are as much idols, as the gods of wood and stone of the heathen;* and a word spoken against the "creed," was, by our fathers, resented with tumult like that, when the cry was raised at Ephesus, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."

But as ancient paganism yielded to Christianity, so modern paganism, (creed worship,) is yielding to the religion of Christ.

The American church is the beautiful city, coming up out of the ashes of old-built up by the spirit of love that is abroad is the land.

Discourse the Second.

LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.

(An Historical Lecture.)

"Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."-Gal. 5: 1.

To know the value of our liberties, we must know what it is to be without them; and this knowledge we can gain only by a careful study of history. There is no part of our liberties so precious as that which was styled by our fathers, "liberty of conscience"-the right secured to us by the clause of the Federal and State Constitutions, prohibiting the making any law respecting the establishment of religion or hindering the free exercise thereof. More persons, as appears by the records of history, have been deprived of life on account of religion, than are now living in the world; and how many have been deprived of liberty and reduced to poverty on the same account? Two hundred thousand Protestants are said to have been slain by the Roman Catholics. in Ireland, in the year 1641!** Cromwell afterwards avenged the slaughter of these by brutally massacreing thousands of Irish Roman Catholics. Millions of lives of Franks and Saracens were swallowed up in the crusades. Ever since the conversion of Constantine, until the present age, Christianity has leaned upon the sword. Jesus proclaimed · "peace on earth, good will toward men." He was not the author of persecutions. The doctrines of the New Testament are averse to "doing evil that good may come." But ever since Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, until the year 1688, when William and Mary ascended the English throne, and the brief period between the death of Charles I, and of Oliver Cromwell, non-conformity to the established religion-its ceremonies and doctrines, was a crime against the State. In England, in the year 1592, the following law was passed.

"If any person above the age of sixteen, shall obstinately refuse to repair to some church, chapel, or usual place of common prayer, to hear divine service, for the space of one month, without lawful excuse, or

"The creed and the idol are alike designed to define God, to limit the infinite, to make the unseen visible, to represent, in a tangible manner, God and others in the spirit world."-N. Summerbell, in Christian Pulpit, Feb., 1873.

** See Neal's History of the Puritans.

shall at any time, forty days after the end of this session, by printing, wrting, or express words, go about to persuade any of her majesty's subjects to deny, withstand, or impugn her majesty's power or authority in causes ecclesiastical, or shall dissuade them from coming to church to hear divine service, or receive the communion according as the law directs, or shall be present at any unlawful assembly, conventical or meeting under color, or pretense of any exercise of religion, that every person so offending and lawfully convicted, shall be committed to prison without bail, till they shall conform and yield themselves to come to church, and sign a declaration of their conformity. But in case the offenders against this statute, being lawfully convicted, shall not submit and sign the declaration within three months; then they shall abjure the realm, and go into perpetual banishment. And if they do not depart within the time limited by the Quarter sessions, or justices of the peace; or if they return at any time afterwards without the queen's license, they shall suffer death without benefit of clergy."

Be it borne in mind that this law was passed in Protestant England, under the reign of "good Queen Elizabeth"-not in a Roman Catholic kingdom-and that, under the workings of this law, many hundreds of families of humble worshippers of God, were driven into banishment from their homes and native country; and many devoted men and women were put to death, "without benefit of clergy"-thus consigning them (as was believed by those inflicting the punishment) to an endless hell. This law was passed at the instigation of the bishops of the Church of England. By the workings of this and similar laws, God brought about the settlement of the United States with Godfearing men and women; and He, (bringing good out of evil, and causing the wrath of man to praise Him,) is building up here a nation that will be the means, in His hands, of giving liberty to the oppressed of all nations, by tearing down all "thrones, and dominions, principalities and powers," and trampling into dust the "rulers of the darkness of this world," and thus bring in the reign of the Messiah. Let it also be ever borne in mind that the Saviour himself was put to death, not by the "common people," who "heard him gladly;" but by the "chief priests and elders," who apprehended him by night, not daring to arrest him by day, though he appeared openly, teaching in the synagogues. The people loved him-believed on him-followed him in such multitudes that they "trode one upon another"-thousands upon thousands going after him wherever he went. The arrest, trial and crucifixion of Jesus our Saviour, by the chief priests and elders, is but a picture of all the persecutions that have been in the world. The following example is one among thousands not less cruel, that might be copied from English history.

Dr. Leighton, a Scot's divine, for writing a book against the hierarchy of the Church of England, entitled "Appeal to Parliament, or Zion's Plea against Prelacy," was arrested and tried in the year 1630. The defendant in his answer, avowed the writing of the book, denying any ill intention, his design being only to lay before the next Parliament, for their consideration, a true account of the oppressions of the bishops. He says in his book: "The bishops are men of blood. We do not read of greater persecutions and higher indignities done towards God's people, in any nation, than in this, since the death of Queen Elizabeth." He calls the prelacy of the church anti-christian. He declaims vehemently against cannons and ceremonies, and adds: "The church should have her laws from the Scriptures; asd no king may make laws for the house of God." The court adjudged unanimously, for this offense, "that the doctor should be committed to the prison of Fleet, for life, and pay a fine of ten thousand pounds (nearly 50,000 dollars,) that the high commission should degrade him from his mini

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stry, and that then, he should be brought to the pillory at Westminster, while the court was sitting and be whipped. After whipping, be set in the pillory a convenient time; have one of his ears cut off, one side of his nose slit, and be branded in his face with a double SS, for sower of sedition; that then he should be carried back to prison, and after a few days be pilloried a second time in Cheepside, and be there likewise whipped, and have the other side of his nose slit, and his other ear cut off, and then be shut up in prison for the remainder of his life. "Bishop Laud," says the Historian Neal, "pulled off his cap, while the merciless sentence was pronouncing, and gave God thanks." The poor prisoner, Dr. Leighton, after being punished as above, and lying in prison ten years, petitioned the Long Parliament for release:

*

"I was apprehended," he says, "while coming from sermon by a high commission warrant and dragged along the street with bills and staves, to London House. The jailer of Newgate being sent for, clapped me in irons, and carried me with a strong power into a loathsome, ruinous dog-hole, full of rats and mice, that had no light but a little grate; the roof being uncovered, the snow and rain beat in upon me; having no bedding, nor place to make a fire, but the ruins of an old smoky chimney. In this woeful place I was shut up for fifteen weeks, nobody being suffered to come to me, till at length my wife was admitted. ** * At the end of lfteen weeks I was served with a subpoena on an information laid against me by Sir. R. Heath, Attorney General, whose dealing with me was full of cruelty and deceit; but I was then sick and in the opinion of four physicians, thought to be poisoned; because all of my hair and skin came off; that in the hight of my sickness, the cruel sentence was passed and executed, November 26, the following, when I received thirty-six stripes upon my naked back, with a three-fold cord, my hands being tied up to a stake, and then stood almost two hours in the pillory, in the frost and snow, before I was branded in the face, my nose slit, and ears cut off; after this I was carried by water to the Fleet, and shut up in such a room that I was never well, and after eight years, was turned into the common goal, where I have now lain two years."

This memorable Parliament released him from prison, voted him satisfaction for his sufferings, (he was then a man seventy-two years of age,) and afterwards impeached Arch-Bishop Laud, for his many tyrannies, and brought him to the scaffold, where he was beheaded.

Persecution was unknown in England before the latter end of the fourteenth century, when the followers of Wickliff began to be delivered over to the civil power to be burned. During the reign of Richard II, it was enacted that all who preached without license against the catholic faith, or the laws of the land, should be arrested and kept in prison until they "justified themselves according to law and reason and the holy church," etc. When Richard II was deposed and the crown usurped by Henry IV, in order to "gain the good will of the clergy" a law was passed by which the king's subjects were put from under his protection and left to the mercy of the bishops in their spiritual courts, and might upon suspicion of heresy be imprisoned and put to death without presentment or trial by jury. In the beginning of Henry V, a new law was passed against the followers of Wickliff, "That they should forfeit all the lands they had in fee-simple, and their goods and chattles to the king." By virtue of these statutes, the clergy of the catholic church inflicted numberless cruelties upon the people. If any one denied them, any degree of respect or those profits they pretended were their due, he was immediately suspected of heresy, imprisoned and most probably put to death.

In the year 1530, Henry VIII, threw off the yoke of Rome, when

by law the king became the head of the English church. The church of England retained the persecuting principles of the church of Rome; and all protestant churches that ever had power are guilty of the blood of martyrs. Among the earliest martyrs burned by the church of England, were Rev. Mr. Hitton, burned at Smithfield in 1530; the Rev. Mr. Bilney, burned at Norwich, in 1531; Mr. Byfield, James Burnham, besides two men and a woman at York. In the year 1532, Mr. John Frith, an excellent scholar of the University of Cambridge. was burned at Smithfield, with one Hewett, a poor apprentice for denying the corporal presence of Christ in the sacrament. These under Henry VIII, under Edward VI, persecutions continued with great cruelty the mild and humane young king being pushed on to this bloody work by Archbishop Cranmer. Says the historian Neal:

"Joan Bocher, or Joan of Kent, obstinately maintained that Christ was not truly incarnate of the Virgin, whose flesh being sinful he could not partake of it; but the Word by the consent of the inward man in the Virgin took flesh of her. These were her words, a scholastic nicety, not capable of doing much mischief, and far from deserving so severe a punishment. The poor woman could not reconcile the spotless purity of Christ's human nature, with his receiving flesh from a sinful creature, and for this she was declared an obstinate heretic and delivered over to the secular power to be burned. When the compassionate young king could not prevail with himself to sign the warrant for her execution, Cranmer employed his superior learning to persuade him. He argued from the practice of the Jewish church in stoning blashemers, which rather silenced his highness than satisfied him; for at last when he yielded to the Archbishop's importunity, he told him with tears in his eyes, if he did wrong, since it was in submission to his authority, he should answer for it to God. This struck the Archbishop with surprise, yet he suffered the sentence to be executed: nor," continues the author, "did his grace renounce his burning principles as long as he was in power. for about two years after, he went through the same bloody work again. One George Van Paris, a Dutchman, being convicted of saying that God the Father was only God, and that Christ was not very God, was dealt with to abjure, but refusing, he was condemned in the same manner, with Joan of Kent, and on the 25th of April, 1552, was burned at Smithfield. He was a man of strict and virtuous life, and very devout. He suffered with great constancy of mind, kissing the faggots that were to burn him. No part of Archbishop Cranmer's life," adds the historian, "exposed him more than this. It was now said by the papists that they saw men of harmless lives might be put to death for heresy by the confession of the reformers themselves. In all the books published in Queen Mary's days justifying the severities against the protestants, these instances were always produced, and when Cranmer himself was brought to the stake, they called it a just retaliation. But," says he, "neither this nor any other arguments could convince the divines of that age of the absurdity of putting men to death for conscience' sake."

Of the persecutions of the protestants by the Roman catholics during the reign of Queen Mary, from 1553 to 1558, Neal says: "The victims were led by companies to the stake. During the five years of her reign, two hundred and seventy-seven persons were burnt to death for their religion, on the island of Britain, of whom were five bishops, twenty-one clergymen, eighty-four tradesmen, one hundred husbandmen, laborers, and servants, fifty-five women and four children. Besides these there were fifty-four more under prosecution; seven of whom were whipped, and sixteen perished in prison, the rest were making themselves ready for execution, when Mary died, and the sufferers