If any one looks with unprejudiced eye at the condition of those countries where the word of God is freely preached, where the Holy Scriptures are familiar to the hand of every man, and free inquiry the prerogative of every rational being, and then compares it with the condition of those countries in which education is fettered by the priesthood, where the Holy Scriptures are forbidden or inaccessible to the people, who cannot even read them, where the people are ignorant, or taught only blindly to obey the priests and the temporal government! Let him compare Switzerland with Italy, Prussia with Austria, England with France, North America with South America! In which is there most morality, most order? In which is there the largest amount of prosperity, spiritual and temporal? In which are popular revolutions least to be dreaded? In which are the States themselves most secure, calm, and, at the same time, most progressive towards the object of all government, the general common weal? Is it not in the countries where freedom of conscience and freedom of citizenship are in the possession of the people? Where the people themselves may choose their own faith and their own laws; where the human being is placed in immediate contact with the highest ideas, and made responsible for his own choice and his own actions? The testimony of history, then, seems to admonish us to follow the example of Him who called the poor and the unlearned fishermen to be the apostles of His kingdom, and who calls us all to continue His work of liberation.
“But when that which is perfect is come, then that
- Vol. II.—18
