Page:The Relation of the Sunday-school System to our Christian Patriotism.pdf/22

22, biography the most honest and useful, eloquence the most powerful and persuasive, poetry the most sublime and beautiful, argument the closest and most profound, politics the justest and most liberal, and religion pure from the throne of God; it alone teaches morals with sufficient authority, motive, and example—the authority of God, the motives of eternity, and the example of Jesus Christ, God-in-man. Thus we find, that, in exact proportion as the Bible is read, useful knowledge, civil liberty and sound morals prevail.

It was the Reformation, aided by the press, that burst the chains of feudal oppression and scattered the darkness of long ignorance by the might and the light of the Bible, which the priest and the tyrant had hid from the souls of the people for ages; and now, where the Reformation has not prevailed, the people (I use the word in our wide republican sense) are yet in bondage, political and moral, as deep as when (to use the language of a Church of England homily) “the world was drowned in the pit of damnable idolatry by the space of eight hundred years.” The world is indebted to such men as Wycliffe and Luther and Calvin and Zuingle, for the blessings of social morality and political freedom, more than to any others since the apostles. The reason is obvious. When men read their Bibles and learn the liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free, that God is the only Master whose right it is to reign, that labour is honourable, and that all men are brothers, the masses upheaving with more than giant strength will fling off every tyrannous weight that presses them down. Without Christianity, the religion which holds open the simple and uncorrupted Book of