Page:The History of Liberty.djvu/10

 our hands the sacred Charter of our immortal destinies, in the hallowed records of which are wrapped up by the wisdom of a father’s love all our multiform interests, which will, under the vivifying and elevating influence of this charter—spread themselves out in all the beauty and grandeur of their perfect developments, over the landscape of time, and over the illimitable fields of eternity? A charter that secures to man all the good that earth and time can yield—and all that heaven and the universe can bestow—; a charter that re-baptizes the degenerate spirit of man in the imperishable features of divine love and wisdom; and stamps thereon the lineaments of immortality? For what purpose was this given to man, if the fullest liberty was not also granted to read—peruse and study its contents? So much for the inferential proof that Liberty is the gift of God. Let us proceed to examine the positive. The Gospel dispensation which has brought Liberty as well as immortality to light is full of this species of proof—, and we will occupy your time and attention by selecting one single passage from the sacred record—one which is of itself sufficient to establish our position; one that covers and sustains all the ground we have glanced over in our inferential disquisition of the question. It is as comprehensive as Liberty itself, and gives to man an intellectual privilege to all that is contained in the universe of God. A privilege that confers upon man an intellectual heirship to that universe and all its contents, to be followed hereafter by a moral and legal heirship to the same, in proportion as man is active honest and faithful in the exercise of that privilege, which is—“—and hold to  is ”. Here then is the charter of Liberty to man as a divine gift. Nothing can be more comprehensive than it is. Nothing is excepted—, nothing forbidden. No tree stands in this intellectual garden, a garden whose limits are the limits of the universe, whose tempting fruit has an interdict of exile and death thrown around it; no, every thing is to be touched—tried—examined—proved—; then the division made; the bad must be cast away—the good retained, held fast—, at any and every sacrifice. Liberty then divides itself into two parts—: the first is intellectual—the second is moral Liberty. By the first, man has a divine, eternal and inalienable right to know every thing, to examine every thing, and to try or prove every thing, in the works and word of God—, and every thing that may have, however remote, any bearing or influence, directly or indirectly upon man’s interests; individual, or social, political or religious, temporal, or eternal. And by the second, man has the