The conservatism of society has ever regarded liberty as the black flag of the moral marauder, the emblem of a piratical intention upon the casket of the world that contains the jewels of honor, justice, virtue and social order.
So persistently and malignantly has freedom been represented as a wrecker's light, kindled only to lure to destruction, that to represent it as worthy to be trusted is to arouse the spirit which pursued Voltaire to his grave with a lie, erected a shaft of calumny over the tomb of Paine, and which now, with the coward's weapon of slander, attacks the living who refuse to acknowledge that the voice of the Church is the voice of God.
But nevertheless we believe with Burns that:
Upo' this tree there grows sic fruit, Its virtues a' can tell, man; It raises man aboon the brute, It maks him ken himsel', man; Gif ance the peasant taste a bite, He's greater than a lord, man, And ni' the beggar shares a mite Of a' he can afford, man.
And so we exclaim in the words of one of our own true poets:
Always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved, And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.
You have all heard of the man who refused to open his eyes for a year, and who declared that during that time nothing could be seen on account of the darkness. But the endeavor to perpetuate old errors by keeping the eyes closed to the facts of science, the truths of philosophy, and the progress of the human race, has not been crowned with success. The further attempt to convert the world to what James Parton calls a "kitchen religion" is merely waste of power.
The preaching of Christianity is making "much ado about nothing." What we want is manhood and womanhood.
It is said by the Church that the man who lives for his family and brings all that he can win of what is fair and bright and glad to those he loves, may be a good man, but he is not a Christian, and therefore has no religion.
Give me then the man who is not a Christian, and who has no religion, for if the man who loves his wife and children, who gives to them the strength of his arm, the thought of his brain, the warmth of his heart, has not religion, the world is better off without it, for these are the highest and holiest things which man can do.