Page:The History of Liberty.djvu/17

 physical science, but an assemblage of facts and truths ascertained in this way?—, and all these discoveries are but approximating, oh how distant from final truth! A people in the first exercise of great and multiplied rights, interests and privileges, will commit errors and follies; go wrong in some things, and fail in others; and perhaps like the child in its first attempts to walk, they may seriously injure themselves; but these sore hurts and hard knocks will improve the bump of cautiousness, and make both more prudent and careful; and thus each will finally succeed. True Liberty like christianity has been most sadly abused perverted and corrupted; but the friends of both appear not yet to understand that the only corrective for all the abuses of Liberty, is Liberty; and the only corrective for all the abuses of Christianity, and all the innumerable evils that flow from this source, is Christianity; God himself can furnish no other or better remedies than these. And how presumptuous and vain is it then for man to talk of other correctives; and yet this is what the friends of both are oft engaged in. They would furnish safeguards to both—and in doing so they virtually trammel and circumscribe the influence and impair the efficiency of both. There is a want of faith, among the advocates of Liberty, in the efficiency of Liberty, which impels them to add to its efficiency and safety by connecting therewith some extraneous circumstances; just as it has fared with Christianity: few indeed of the friends of the latter can trust its safety and efficiency, in the world without throwing around it the shield of their wisdom and understanding: they are afraid to trust themselves and all their interests and destinies for time and eternity with all the interests and destinies of society and the world to the simple scheme of Christianity as unfolded in the word of God: and there is a similar want of faith, in the safety and efficiency of simple Liberty among its advocates and friends. Strange indeed it is, and painful as it is strange, that man can trust God so little, while he has confided so much trust in us and committed so much unto us. Strange that men esteeming themselves wise should confide more in the wisdom of men, knowing what fools men are, than in the wisdom of God; yet it is no more strange than true. And infidelity is now the sin of the state as it is the sin of the church; an infidelity that is positively injurious to both, compared with which the technical infidelity of the unbeliever is harmless. The infidelity to which I allude is that which causes the politician of the state and the ecclesiastic of the church to trust more to the wisdom of men than to the wisdom of God; that infidelity which causes both to repose