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the end is the personal liberty and happiness of the individual, a society in which the essential unit is a free man.

When," from the thick darkness where He was," God spake on Mount Sinai, His commandments were addressed to the individuals of the human race, and every solemn injunction of prohibition or of performance was pronounced to each person severally. "Thou shalt," and "thou shalt not," never in the plural, but in the singular throughout.

The one prayer framed for human guidance by the Son of God mainly and plainly teaches these things:

The universal Fatherhood of the Creator; the equal individual and direct access, at will, of every human being to Him; the personality contained in the relation of parent and child, and the consequent kindred of the human race. The injunction of absolute privacy in the approach to Him, alone and in the seclusion of an inner room, the door being closed, kneeling down in secret supplication, and asking that the kingdom of God shall come and His will be done on earth.

The divine commandment of this prayer conceded, it is impossible to deny that the maintenance of individual conscience and private judgment is an absolute and abiding duty, the performance of which contains the germ of human happiness, and its growth, and that human progress and safety are dependent upon obedience to it.

In the primordial nature of man this principle is implanted, for "God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul, and to this instrumentality, so selected and endowed, dominion was given over the earth and over every living thing upon the earth.

If we are seeking light to lead our march in life, and arranging our plans of government as means to the great end, it behooves us to recognize this origin and underlying nature, and to frame our laws in subordination and harmony.

From these laws of our being there is no escape. They must continue in operation, accompanying and entering into every stage and varied condition of human existence, under whatever

form of social and political association, so long as the world shall endure.

It is vain to suppose that the life of a nation, and of the individuals who compose it, can be ordered and regulated with hope of healthful progress or permanence when organized in disregard or in opposition to the law ordained in its creation.

Some things are accidental and transitory, others are essentially permanent. The freedom of the individual in human society is, and always must be, the essential and immutable factor to meet and obediently to recognize and carry out the developments of the Supreme Will as it shall be permitted to become known to the minds and consciences of men if progress or even permanence in civilization is hoped for. For as man is

"Heaven born and destined to the skies again,"

the laws that placed him here will surely vindicate themselves. The voluntary principle needs and calls for the exercise and expansion of the human faculties — moral, intellectual, and physical — while the coercive and involuntary principle induces their disuse, contraction, and enfeeblement and here is the parting of the ways- and I have endeavored to point out the right way, and by stating the origin and nature of mankind, to lead you to believe that, in the scrupulous safeguarding of personal liberty, independence in judgment, thought, and lawful action, the true seed of progress and permanence can alone be found.

Those who believe the wisdom and morals of Christ, and yet doubt or deny His divinity — and we who believe His divinity, and, so guided, accept the moral order it inculcates, which has lighted up the pathway of duty and upward progress of humanity - can all together bow in obedience to teachings that so unquestionably have transformed and advanced Christendom to the leading place it holds in the world's affairs, and so manifestly have impressed themselves upon the civilization they have created, which raises its head and smiles upon the world as His kingdom comes and His divinity progresses. The lesson taught is the dignity of humanity; that within each human heart is the

kingdom of God, and that the conservation of individuality and personal character is the essential duty for the gradual comprehension of "the increasing purpose and the progress of

the race.

The most profound and salutary influence in the progress of the world has come from the institution of single and indissoluble marriage, and where it has been most respected the highest and most influential civilization will be found.

Silently, slowly, but irresistibly, an enduring principle has, by divine ordinance, made its way into man's social and political existence, by the decree that elevated one-half the human race to its just individual sphere of duty and responsibility, and spiritual equality with the other half. When the dignity of her equal birthright was thus divinely proclaimed, woman as the help-meet and companion of man, no longer the mere toy of passion, or the unequal and degraded victim of polygamy, was assigned to her just and original place in the law of creation then, and not until then, the names of wife, mother, and daughter, began to bear their true significance, and the tie of marriage was placed above all others. Upon this equal union. the institution of the family is founded. Home and its relations, the care and education of her children, endowed the wife and mother with powers, duties and responsibilities but little known before. Increasing confidence was followed by increased affection and respect, and the assured legitimacy of offspring induced industry and the acquisition of property from the sense of reliance upon its transmission and inheritance.

There is a formal term which in later days has lost something of its sweet original significance - the "spinster"- for it told how the clothing of the entire household came from the active industry of woman, and the Saxon phrase, even more forgotten, "Freodowebbe," "the weaver of peace," expressing the subtler influence distilled by gentleness, and love and trust, which color the web of life with the hues of heaven.

“And pure religion breathing household laws,"

passing its domestic precincts, has transfused its influence into the civilization of our day, until it has become its most poten

tial force. Without it our present status of civilization could never have been attained, and upon it rest our best hopes for its maintenance and progress.

Truth has been called the daughter of Time, and assuredly the history of the nineteen centuries which have passed since the Light of the Christian moral order has been shed upon the world, discloses the indubitable fact that every discovery under which improvement in human relations has been accomplished, and by which the civilization of mankind has progressed, has been brought into the world's use through the channel of an individual mind, and in no instance by the associated power of mankind. No great discovery can be named which has opened new fields of beneficent and useful industry, increased benevolence, widened and deepened sympathies, and elevated human thought and action, but is due to the free conscience, private judgment and mental exertion of an individual.

In the world's history, no legislature, no court, no council, no school, no majority of numbers, no aggregation of human force, or association, can be credited with the origination of a single invention or discovery which has marked the advance of the human race. In the brain of the individual man, solely under the personal qualities and characteristics of his nature, the forces which generate discovery and invention have been deposited. This is the true seed of progress and growth, and the torch of knowledge, which is to illumine man's pathway onward and upward, is caught by one human hand as it is dropped by another, or is handed on by the voluntary force of those faculties which are imbedded in the nature of that creature who alone of God's creations had breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and became a living soul.

"Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll
Round us, each with different powers,

And other forms of life than ours

What know we greater than the Soul?"

We are witnessing in our day the decline and fall of empires once mighty in their material force, but now inert, decrepit, devoid of the seminal principle of growth, or the sustenance of

a moral order. And it is plainly apparent that these are the necessary and logical consequences of despotic government, the destruction of personal freedom, the enfeeblement of the moral fiber, the paralysis of individual intellectual and moral growth. The march of the world's improvement, led by those nations who have safeguarded the freedom of the individual, has changed the face of the world, and the relations of its inhabitants and their intercourse. Where the right of private judgment has been secured and left free, there new ideas have entered, have been accepted and assimilated. And new ideas cannot enter where the individual mind is not free, but is chained fast to a rigid code that contains no vital principle of growth and adaptation to change, and is fed upon the husks of creeds outworn.

We are told that Omar, the lieutenant of Mahomet, ordering the Alexandrian libraries to be burned, justified their destruction by saying: "If what they taught was not in the Koran, it could not be true, and therefore would mislead, and should be destroyed; and if the Koran did contain it, then all other books were superfluous, and only dangerous.' Minds fed upon such creeds are indeed "old bottles," and when the wine of new thoughts is poured into them, the bursting of the bottles will follow, and the wine is wasted on the ground, and this is the truth of history we read to-day.

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When the power that makes the laws, and the power that applies the laws, are in the same hands, the laws are useless, for despotism reigns, and the hope of freedom dying out, the mental faculties become enfeebled, and the whole community withers and decays. Thus despotism creates only ignorance and servility, and ignorance and servility in turn perpetuate despotism.

It will, I believe, be conceded by all students of jurisprudence, that in the annals of political literature, whether of ancient or modern times, high rank must be assigned to the "Federalist," the compilation of essays, written to expound and recommend for adoption by the several States of the American Union - the constitution of the United States as it had been agreed upon and framed by delegates in convention at Philadelphia in 1787.

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Of the three great men-Hamilton, Madison, and Jaywhose names adorn this volume, and have shed undying luster

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