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are free, because they may have written on a sheet of paper the word liberty, and posted it at the corners of the streets. True Christian freedom is not a placard on a dead wall, or an empty word on indifferent lips. It is a living and holy power, the protection of the feeble, instruction of the benighted, fairest adornment of the domestic hearth, complete disinthralment of all the oppressed, only guaranty of public health and perpetual progress. It was once disputed whether persons of a different color from Europeans ought to be considered as having a lawful claim to the immunities of men; but Christianity, pouring light upon their foreheads, and revealing the superscription of God thereon, has forever silenced that discussion. If civil tyranny and bigoted craft shall for a short time longer combine their infernal machinations to destroy the privileges which belong to every human soul, their time is short; both will soon sink on the fiery billows of eternal ruin, as they richly deserve, even as a vulture and a snake, outspent, drop, twisted in inextricable fight, into a shoreless sea.

In an age of most degraded barbarism, man came to be estimated so low as to have a pecuniary price put upon him; he was bought and sold as a common chattel, to abolish which infamous traffic, it was necessary that God himself should be sold for thirty pieces of silver. That execrable bargain was the pledge of emancipation for every poor, deserted, stripped, and lacerated slave. The Almighty would show to the universe that he never formed the limbs of his children to be chafed with fetters, nor their souls to be murdered by base servitude. To this end, through the gospel of his Son, he gave to the world an entirely new element, one which imparts worth, health, and growth to all the rest, and without which they can have but a brief and comparatively useless being in the minds, hearts, and characters of men; and that element is independence personal, political, and moral. This gives strength to virtue, intensity of feeling as the mainspring of upright principle in every soul, and blends the greatest public

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reformations with the every-day aspirations of private life. It resembles a vigorous though obscure tree, upon which the sun shines and the rains fall, which puts forth its ample foliage in the summer, and preserves its vitality unrestrained by wintry storms for another spring, which, despite all vicissitudes, gives its shade and fruit to all in the proper season, and is even more deeply rooted and rendered more prolific by freezing sleet and howling storms.

We must not shrink from the approach of moral tempests, because the agitation they produce may threaten to be great. When the tyranny of ages is to be heaved off the popular breast that it may breathe freely, when outraged humanity starts up to a full consciousness of its rights and dignity, it is -not in the law of Providence or nature of man that the boon desired should be easily won.

"Great evils ask great passions to redress them,
And whirlwinds fitliest scatter pestilence."

"Curse ye Meroz, saith the angel of the Lord; curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof," sang Deborah. Was it that she called to mind any personal wrongs, rapine, or insult, that she, or the house of Lapidoth, had received from Jabin or Sisera? No: she had dwelt under her palm-tree in the depth of the mountain. But she was a mother in Israel; and with a mother's heart, and with the vehemence of a patriot's love, she had shot the fire of love from her eyes, and poured the blessings of love from her lips, on the people that had jeoparded their lives unto the death against the oppressors; and the bitterness awakened and borne aloft by the same love she precipitated in curses on the selfish and coward recreants who "came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." Well will it be if many who profess to be the disciples, and even the authorized teachers of Christianity do not justly incur all that is frightful in this truly awful malediction.

Danby has painted a picture which represents the "opening of the sixth seal." The heavens are receding; mountains are rending; earth is on fire; wealth, honors, power, are gone; and blank despair seizes every class of mankind, save a poor bondman, who alone stands upright, his chains broken, and his hands with gratitude raised to heaven. Others sink to

a frightful prison; but, thank God, he is free! Let us not wait till that fearful day, but now boldly strive,

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CHAPTER V.

CHRISTIANITY THE REWARDER OF THE SACRIFICED.

In the first part of this comprehensive discussion, we considered the republican character of Jesus Christ; and, in the second, the republican spirit of the primitive church. In this third part, devoted to the analysis of the republican influence of Christian doctrine, we have already portrayed Christianity as being the solace of the obscure, patron of the aspiring, fortifier of the weak, and deliverer of the oppressed. It remains, in this concluding chapter, to show that our holy religion is not only the best inspiration of heroical goodness, but an adequate and eternal rewarder of the sacrificed. To this end we will consider the following leading points: Christianity has ever been the fairest and foremost victim of tyranny, the mightiest antagonist to every form of injustice, and the most glorious rewarder of all devotees for her sake sacrificed.

In the first place, the fairest and foremost victim of tyrannous hate has ever been the divine religion which Christ imbodied and exemplified on earth. He came to destroy all local religions, with their exclusive privileges, and to open the fountains of a purer, more efficacious, and diffusive faith for all mankind. This he avowed at the opening of his ministry, and constantly reiterated up to the close of his earthly career. Just before his sacrifice, he openly affirmed in the temple "that the kingdom of God was to be taken from the Jews, and given to the Gentiles,' (Matt. xxi. 43. Mark xii. 9. Luke xx. 16,) and went so far as to clothe his predictions with vari. ous instructive narratives, (Matt. xxii. 1-14.) Now, how could the Jews have been rejected, and the heathen substituted in

their stead, without the introduction of an order of things new, and entirely different from the former? When Jesus first sent out his disciples with a commission to excite the attention of their fellow-citizens to his enterprises, he did not conceal from them, in the least degree, the fact that their calling was a very dangerous one, (Matt. x. 16,) and the business intrusted to them greatly detested, (Matt. x. 22.) He told them of the abuses of every kind to which they would be subjected, (verses 17, 18,) and observed that the accomplishment of his views would unavoidably result in a universal exasperation and dissension, which should even disturb the peace of families, and sever the tenderest connections, (verses 34-36.) Had Jesus had no other object before him than the improvement of the prevailing religion, could he have anticipated. such dangerous commotions, and spoken of them beforehand? The labors of John the Baptist did not disturb the public tranquillity, for he undertook nothing in opposition to the established constitution. Now, if Jesus, as the result of what he intended to accomplish, looked forward to a dissolution of all former relations, and a state of war between all parts of society, must he not have intended to go much farther than John did? Must he not have purposed the actual overthrow of the regulations then in existence? There is something remarkable in the manner in which, on every occasion, he explained those commandments of the law of Moses, which related to the external service of God, and made up a great part of the Jewish constitution. Nothing was more sacred in the estimation of a Jew than sacrifice. Jesus never intimated that a man should offer sacrifice, but he often censured the abuses, which, to the prejudice of morality, had crept into the service, (Matt. xv. 5, 6; Mark vii. 11, 12,) and, with feelings of marked approbation, told a learned man who had asserted love to God and man to be of more value than 'all whole burnt offerings,' that he was not far from the kingdom of God, (Mark xii. 34.)"

From the discourses of Christ, recorded by the evangelists,

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