Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/118

 menting on Jefferson's principles said:

"The conciseness of Jefferson's style is well illustrated in this statute. Read it over. There is not a superfluous word, and yet there is enough to guard religions liberty. It is not strange that this doctrine so well set forth by Jefferson more than a century ago is now a part of the constitution and bill of rights of every state of this Union. Not only is that today the law of this land, but it is spreading throughout the world. It was only a short time ago that the Czar of Russia issued a decree in which he acknowledged the right of all the subjects of his empire to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience, and I believe that when we come to measure the relative importance of things, the importance of an act like that, the very foundation upon which we build religions liberty—the importance of an act like that, which, gradually spreading, has become the creed of 80,000,000 people, and is ultimately to become the creed of all the world—when we come to consider the vast importance of a thing like that, how can we compare lands or earthly possessions with it?

"In the preamble to this statute, Jefferson set forth the main reasons urged by those who believed in religious freedom. Let me call attention to some of the more important ones. He said, in the first place, that to attempt to compel people to accept a religious doctrine by act of law was to make not Christians but hypocrites. That was one of the reasons, and it was a strong one. He said, too, that there was no earthly judge who was competent to sit in a case and try a man for his religious opinions, for the judgment of the court, he said, would not be a judgment of law, but would be the personal opinion of the judge. What could be more true. No man who has religious convictions himself bears them so lightly that he can lay them aside and act as a judge when another man's religious convictions are involved. Then he suggested—and I think that I am justified in elaborating upon this suggestion a moment—that religion does not need the support of the government to enable it to overcome error. Let me give the exact words of his report, for I cannot change them without doing injury to them:

And finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist of error and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons—free argument and debate; errors cease to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.'

"Tell me that Jefferson lacked reverence for religion He rather lacks reverence who believes that religion is unable to defend herself in a contest with error. He places a low estimate upon the strength of religion who thinks that the wisdom of God must be supplemented by the force of man's puny arm."

Jefferson paid a tribute to the power of truth when he said that truth was able to overcome error in the open field; and that it was this sublime confidence in the triumph of truth that, distinguished him from many of the other great men of his time. In fact, of all the men who have lived upon this earth, I know of no man who surpassed Jefferson in his confidence in the ultimate triumph of truth; and upon what can people build if not upon faith in truth? Take from man his belief in the triumph of that which is right and he builds upon the sand. Give to man an abiding faith in the triumph of that which is true and you give him the foundation of a moral character that can withstand all reverses.

In the preamble to the statute for religious freedom.

Jefferson put first that which I want to speak of last. It was that the regulation of the opinions of