UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 37M S5D 
 
GIFT OF 
 '. : . L. Leebrick 
 

 LIBERALITY-ITS LIMIT 
 
 PRES. HOPKINS'S 
 
 BAGCAiAUftEATE SeHMOK 
 
 jtott m» i s (»■?:■, 
 
LIBERALITY-ITS LIMITS. 
 
 BACCALAUREATE SERMON, 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 WILLIAMSTOWK, MASS. 
 
 JTJr,Y 38, 1867. 
 
 BY MARK HOPKINS, D. D. 
 
 President of Williams College. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQDEST OP THE CLASS. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN & SON, 42 CONGRESS STREET. 
 1867. 
 
Ehtefed according to Act of Congress, in the £eaf 1867, by 
 
 T. R. Marvin & Son, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
SERMON 
 
 II JOHN, 10, 11. 
 
 IF THERE COME ANY UNTO YOU AND BRING NOT THIS DOCTRINE, RECEIVE 
 HIM NOT INTO YOUR HOUSE, NEITHER BID HIM GOD SPEED; FOR HE 
 THAT BIDDETH HIM GOD SPEED IS PARTAKER OF HIS EVIL DEEDS. 
 
 Is it possible that this passage was written by 
 the beloved, and the loving Apostle John? Is 
 it he whose Epistles so commend and command 
 love, who exhorts a kind-hearted woman disposed 
 to hospitality, to close her doors against men sim- 
 ply on account of the doctrine they bring? Xot 
 on account of their character, or their life, but on 
 account of their doctrine ! Yes, their doctrine ! ! 
 How strange ! Was it that he was a Jew, and 
 had but recently emerged from a system avow- 
 edly narrow and exclusive, and did not as yet 
 comprehend the breadth and freedom into which 
 Christianity was ultimately to expand? Did the 
 new wine of that freeer and more liberal system 
 which Christ brought, find in him an old bottle? 
 True, the doctrine to which he refers r was the 
 doctrine of Christ.' It involved the validity of His 
 claims, and seemed to be in peril. "For," says 
 he, " many deceivers are entered into the world 
 who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the 
 
 5S3134 
 
flesh. This is a deceiver and an anti-Christ. . . 
 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in 
 the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that 
 abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both 
 the Father and the Son." It is true, too, that the 
 customs of society, the relations of parties, and 
 the import of such acts were different then. Still, 
 making every allowance, if we judge from this 
 passage and its connections, the Apostle John 
 did not belong to Uhe broad church.' 
 
 Freedom, liberality, breadth, liberal Christianity, 
 broad church; narrowness, illiberality, bigotry, 
 superstition, or, to concentrate all in one word, 
 orthodoxy, — these are the terms that we hear 
 bandied on every side, and we would gladly know 
 their import. 
 
 These terms are applied to men on the ground 
 of their belief — not their belief on all subjects, 
 but 
 
 First, As they believe less or more in the exist- 
 ence and agency of invisible personal beings, in- 
 cluding God. 
 
 Secondly, As they believe less or more in the 
 importance of religious truth. 
 
 And thirdly, As they believe in conditions of 
 salvation that require a life of less or greater 
 strictness, and that thus include a smaller or 
 larger number. 
 
 First, then, men are said to be liberal and broad 
 as the} believe little in invisible personal agency; 
 and to be narrow and superstitious as they believe 
 more in such agency. 
 
 Of belief in such agency Ave have had, and still 
 
have, every shade from the drivelling superstition 
 of African Fetishism to a blank atheism. In a 
 state of ignorance and barbarism, men attribute to 
 personal agency many of those movements and 
 changes in nature which, as society advances, are 
 resolved into the operation of general laws, im- 
 plying but a single agent. The supernatural 
 agency thus believed in is multifarious, capricious, 
 with more of malignity than of good-will, often 
 wholly malignant, and is made by artful men a 
 means of terror, of subjection, and of degradation 
 to the people. There have been no despotisms 
 like those based on superstition, and no lower 
 deep of degradation than that caused bj it, unless 
 it be the degradation of a sensual and bloody 
 infidelity caused by its rebound. 
 
 It is in this belief in the supernatural connected 
 with fear and with irrational and debasing prac- 
 tices from that, that we find the essence of super- 
 stition. Superstition is not, as is said by Charles 
 Ivingsley in a recent lecture on that subject, " the 
 fear of the unknown." It is the fear of the super- 
 natural in the unknown. Take away from super- 
 stition the element of the supernatural, and the 
 residuum is simply error. To dislodge this fear 
 as a cause of degradation to the masses, it does 
 not appear that anything but Christianity can 
 avail, and even that has not been able to do it 
 fully as yet in any country- It is surprising how 
 many superstitions still linger even in the most 
 enlightened parts of Christendom, showing the 
 natural and ineradicable affinity of man for the 
 supernatural, and the certainty of a region, some- 
 

 
 where, and in some form, corresponding- to that 
 affinity. 
 
 But relatively, since the coming of Christ, — 
 
 " The Oracles are dumb ; 
 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving." 
 " Peor and Baalim 
 
 Forsake their temples dim." 
 " Nor is Osiris seen 
 
 In Memphian grove or green." 
 
 Wherever the Bible is fully received, the brood 
 of superstition is dispersed. 
 
 •* The flocking shadows pale 
 Troop to the infernal jail." 
 
 Through the light and impulse given by Chris- 
 tianity, science has taken the place of superstition, 
 and men have thus reached a position that has 
 enabled them to go beyond the limits allowed by 
 Christianity, and to repudiate that without which 
 no such science had been possible. 
 
 In this whole movement there have been 
 marked points of transition. There has been 
 the transition from heathenism to Christianity. 
 This involved no denial of supernatural personal 
 agency, but a change from a belief in the "gods 
 many and the lords many " of that system, to a 
 belief in the one living and true God, and in the 
 system of revelation and redemption made known 
 in the Bible. 
 
 Then there is the transition from a belief in 
 God as revealed in the Bible to deism. Deism 
 acknowledges God. It may, or may not, believe 
 
in providence ; but it knows of no revelation 
 except through nature, and denies that personal 
 interposition ever comes in to change her uni- 
 formities. 
 
 From deism there is a transition to pantheism, 
 and from pantheism — though it may not be 
 easy to see the difference — to absolute atheism. 
 According to either of these systems both reve- 
 lation and miracles are impossible and absurd. 
 
 According to Comte, the apostle of positivism, 
 these transitions, and the necessary steps of the 
 human mind towards its enlargement, are from 
 supernatural agency to metaphysical causation, 
 and from that to positivism. Positivism knows 
 nothing of God. It regards as illegitimate all 
 investigations concerning causes, efficient or final ; 
 and would confine philosophy to a knowledge of 
 facts and their order. 
 
 Now it is to be observed that at each of 
 these steps those who make them, or approxi- 
 mate towards them, claim that they become more 
 liberal and broad, and look upon those they leave 
 behind as narrow and superstitious. If those 
 thus left hold to their views strongly, they call 
 them bigoted. Those, on the other hand, who 
 retain their position, call the party of movement 
 latitudinarians, infidels, heretics. These terms, 
 whether used for commendation or reproach, thus 
 become wholly relative. To a believer in reve- 
 lation, a deist is an infidel; to the atheist, or 
 pantheist, he is still in trammels, limited, narrow; 
 and it is the atheist alone who has come out into 
 perfect freedom and enlargement. 
 
I have said thai these terms are applied on the 
 ground of a belief or disbelief in supernatural 
 agency. This is true ; but it is to be observed 
 
 thai when this belief is so held as to lose its 
 hold upon the conscience and its control of con- 
 duct, the intense meaning that belonged, to the 
 terms originally, especially those o'f reproach, is 
 discharged. They so fade out as to be used 
 with indifference, or in jest, and it is practically 
 regarded, as it really is, of little consequence 
 what a man believes. 
 
 And this leads me to observe, in the second 
 place, that the terms mentioned are applied to 
 men as they believe less or more in the impor- 
 tance of religious truth, and so are less or more 
 strenuous respecting it. 
 
 We here find an anomaly. On other practical 
 subjects men regard truth as vital. Truth is but 
 an expression of the actual state of things, and 
 if men do not act in accordance with that they 
 fail. Who goes to California for gold except as 
 he is assured of the truth that gold is there ? 
 The Bible, too, attaches great importance to 
 truth. It says : " Buy the truth and sell it 
 not." "Contend earnestly for the faith once 
 delivered to the saints." It makes truth the 
 means of sanctification: "Sanctify them through 
 thy truth." It makes salvation depend on belief : 
 "He that believeth shall be saved." "He that 
 bclieveth not shall be damned." And yet it is 
 not, perhaps, strange that the idea of liberality 
 should attach itself to a light estimate of religious 
 truth. 
 
For what do we see ? "We see a belief in 
 dogmas made a substitute for a Christian life, — 
 loud profession and high orthodoxy in connec- 
 tion with lax and questionable morality. We 
 see dogmas maintained with bitterness, and by 
 means subversive of all the principles of the 
 Gospel. We see in most countries a belief in 
 them connected with a settled order of things, 
 and so with power and place. We see how 
 numerous and slight the points are — some of 
 doctrine, some of discipline, extending even to 
 ecclesiastical millinery — on the ground of which 
 men divide and become hostile sects. We see 
 points of difference magnified, and feeling con- 
 cerning them intense, as they are of less impor- 
 tance. We become, perhaps, confused by the 
 diversity and clamor ; and it cannot be thought 
 strange if these exhibitions of weakness and of 
 wickedness should cause a rebound in the oppo- 
 site direction. They have caused this ; and here, 
 as before, the utmost extreme claims for itself the 
 greatest liberality. One cardinal proposition, and 
 but one, those who make this claim do hold to. 
 It is that religious belief, articles of faith, creeds, 
 are of no consequence provided the life be right. 
 
 " For forms and creeds let graceless bigots fight, 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 This they hold ; and as a corollary they hold 
 that those who do not believe it are narrow 
 and bigoted, and not fit to belong to the broad 
 church. It is, indeed, questionable whether they 
 are fit to belong to this nineteenth century. 
 
10 
 
 But in the third place, the terms in question 
 are applied to men as they believe in conditions 
 of salvation that require a life of less or greater 
 strictmss', and that will thus include a smaller or 
 larger number. It is as thus applied that these 
 terms excite the most intense feeling. 
 
 Some believe that all men will be saved do 
 what they may. They believe in self-indulgence 
 till the world is exhausted, and in suicide then as 
 the shortest road to heaven. These are as liberal 
 and broad in their sphere as the atheist is in his. 
 B et ween this point and the fastings, the flagel- 
 lations, the hair shirts of monasticism, or the 
 precise bead-telling and genuflexions of lighter 
 forms of superstition, there is every variety both 
 of view and of practice. 
 
 In the early stages of all religious movements, 
 whether dispensations, reformations, or the origin 
 of sects, the tendency is to a definite belief and 
 strict practice. But in time the force of the 
 original movement dies out. "The letter that 
 killeth" displaces "the spirit that giveth life." 
 Forms stiffen into formalism, and under this 
 there will lurk, first indifference, then infidelity, 
 and then contempt. After this no human power 
 can renew the movement. For human systems, 
 decay is death ; while in God's system, apparent 
 decay is simply winter. But during such a pro- 
 cess of relaxation, men who had seemed molten 
 together, separate, and re-combine as by elective 
 affinity. As some become rich and self-indulgent, 
 and more desirous of the fashions and gaieties of 
 the world, they gravitate towards certain denom- 
 
11 
 
 mations ; and denominations themselves, as the 
 Quakers and Methodists within the last two 
 generations, become greatly modified. As such 
 changes go on, the more strict lament the degen- 
 eracy of the times, while those thought to be 
 degenerate regard themselves as coming into 
 greater freedom and enlargement. They have 
 become more liberal, and look back upon their 
 former state as one of narrowness, or supersti- 
 tion, or bigotry. Perhaps they remain Avith the 
 denomination in which they were born, but they 
 will more likely take or make an occasion to 
 pass into one where the general standard is 
 more lax. 
 
 In this state of things, with lines not sharply 
 drawn, with indefinite standards, with customs 
 objected to and denounced, not as sinful in them- 
 selves, but on account of their associations and 
 liabilities to abuse, we hear the terms in ques- 
 tion applied quite jiromiscuously, and often with 
 intense feeling. One man regards his own 
 standard as scriptural and rational; that of his 
 neighbor as lax and worldly. His neighbor re- 
 gards his own standard as enlightened and 
 liberal, and that of Ms neighbor as narrow and 
 bigoted. He thinks him over-scrupulous and 
 that he makes Christ's yoke heavier than Christ 
 himself made it. 
 
 AVe have thus three spheres and standards of 
 liberality. In the first the relation of man and of 
 nature to supernatural agency is immediately in 
 question; in the second it is the relation of a 
 belief in truth to practice that is in question; and 
 
12 
 
 in the third it is the relation of the practical life 
 to the spirit of Christianity and to the moral gov- 
 ernment of God. But while the questions are 
 thus apparently different, their central point is the 
 same. They all find their unity and interest in 
 the relation of the human will to supernatural 
 control. Eliminate but this one idea, and the 
 crested waves of these controversies will subside 
 to the merest ripple ; and the terms that may be 
 used, however intense in form, will be charged 
 with no divisive elements. The real questions 
 are, the existence of a holy God claiming control 
 over the human will, and the extent of the control 
 thus claimed. 
 
 Is there then any criterion of liberality in these 
 several spheres? May Ave know where narrow- 
 ness ends on the one side, and laxness begins on 
 the other? 
 
 And first, what is our criterion in the sphere of 
 belief respecting supernatural agency, involving 
 a belief in efficient causation and in final causes 
 or ends intelligently proposed and pursued in 
 nature? If we begin with Fetishism and pass 
 up, resolving phenomena that had been attributed 
 to spiritual agency into general laws, where shall 
 we stop? 
 
 We must stop at the point ivhere negation begins 
 to affect the sum and grandeur of being. This is 
 the criterion. In passing up from Fetishism we 
 do indeed constantly deny, but we also constantly 
 affirm. As we diminish the number of supernat- 
 ural agents we increase their greatness, till we 
 resolve all natural laws and forces directly or 
 
13 
 
 indirectly into the will of the one infinite God. 
 If now we clothe Him in our conceptions with 
 perfect moral attributes, we have the highest 
 conceivable sum and mode of being. This is the 
 condition, and the only condition, of the perfect 
 working and indefinite progress of the human 
 faculties. Here we reach the point of a liberality 
 without narrowness and without laxness. Be- 
 yond this we pass into negation and tenuity. 
 
 The criterion is one not merely to be seen by 
 the intellect, but to be felt as a condition of 
 growth. The condition of indefinite growth in 
 intellect is thoughts of God still unfathomed; 
 and the condition of growth in the moral nature 
 is a recognized goodness in God that transcends 
 ours. Man cannot live in negations. If he could 
 reach a point where the imagination even could 
 transcend the possibilities of being, he would 
 begin to be dwarfed. As in passing upwards we 
 reach a point where breathing becomes less effec- 
 tive from the thinness of the atmosphere, so the 
 moment we begin to deny intelligent will to God, 
 or to impair his moral attributes, or to limit his 
 control over the universe by anything but the 
 conditions which he has himself imposed, we 
 come into a mental atmosphere of less vitality. 
 All history shows that from that point construc- 
 tive power wanes, and moral torpor begins. 
 
 "What we say then is, that our criterion here 
 must be the condition of highest activity and 
 fullest growth for the human powers ; that that 
 condition is the complement and perfection of 
 being as recognized in an infinite and personal 
 
14 
 
 God; and that for man to apply terms of com- 
 mendation to virtual negations that must stifle 
 his own life and dwarf his owji growth is to call 
 evil good. 
 
 But secondly, what is the criterion of liberality 
 in regard to the importance of religious truth? 
 
 It is here virtually the same as before. Truth 
 is of importance only as it ministers to life, and 
 as it is the only thing that can thus minister. 
 What we claim for truth in the religious sphere, 
 is the same that we claim for it elsewhere — - just 
 that and no more. Everywhere it is the basis ol 
 all rational action, the very light in which man 
 must walk if he would not stumble. Men hold 
 truth that is not acted upon. There is much that 
 cannot be the basis of action, and that which 
 may, and should be, is often held, or rather im- 
 prisoned, in indolence and unrighteousness. Be 
 its adaptations what they may, let any truth lie 
 in the mind undigested, unassimilated, giving no 
 impulse or guidance, and it might as well not be 
 there. Still, whatever rational action there may 
 be, is, and must be based on the belief of some- 
 thing as true. Men do something because they 
 believe something; and in religion no less than 
 in other things they must believe in order to do, 
 unless, indeed, we resolve the religious life into 
 that mere muddle of unintelligent feeling called 
 mysticism. Men may believe in God and not 
 worship him, but they cannot worship him unless 
 they believe in him. Unless they believe that 
 " Christ has come in the flesh," they cannot follow 
 him. Unless they believe in a moral government, 
 
15 
 
 they cannot fear to sin ; nor can they " flee from 
 the wrath to come," unless they believe that there 
 is a coming wrath. A man may conduct his sec- 
 ular business with a degree of success under 
 some misapprehension of the facts on which it is 
 based, but if he misconceive them wholly he must 
 fail ; and a man who wholly denies or perverts 
 the facts on which a religious life is based, must 
 fail in that. But in either case the more perfectly 
 the truth is seen, that is, all truth that can bear 
 upon results, the more the man acts in his true 
 element as a man, and the more sure is he of 
 success. i 
 
 We believe then in no weak liberality, or pre- 
 tence of breadth that would ignore the vital con- 
 nection of truth with life; and our criterion here, 
 the point of liberality without narrowness and 
 without laxity, is such a belief in all religious 
 truth as shall be the condition of the highest life. 
 
 But we are here met by another despairing 
 and debilitating assertion. We are told that the 
 human mind has not the power to separate the 
 truth that is essential and vital from that which 
 is not. 
 
 If by this it be meant that the human mind 
 cannot know how little truth a man may believe 
 and yet be saved, it is true. ]Nor are we required 
 to know this. It is not our business to judge 
 men, but systems, and neither liberality nor char- 
 ity can require us to confound these, or to fail to 
 discriminate them by sharp lines. Charity may 
 make large allowance, but may not require us to 
 confound things that differ. It may believe that 
 
1(3 
 
 a Mohammedan, or a Deist, may have truth enough 
 to save him, but it cannot deny the power and 
 the right to say that neither Mohammedanism nor 
 Deism is Christianity. And so, if among those 
 who call themselves Christians, any profess a 
 Christianity that has no redemption in it; and if, 
 on the best comparison he can make of it with 
 the New Testament, any man shall conclude that 
 that is not Christianity; it is no more a want of 
 charity to say so, than it is for a chemist, after 
 testing it, to say that an acid is not an alkali. 
 Let men use their intellects freely, fairly, mod- 
 estly, and yet with a confidence that shall honor 
 God, as implying that the faculty he has given 
 for the discovery of truth is neither impotent nor 
 delusive ; let them thus decide what Christianity 
 is, and then receive to Christian fellowship those 
 who accept what they conceive to be its essential 
 doctrines, and who show that they submit their 
 hearts to its claims. If, in doing this some should 
 include doctrines not essential to Christianity, it 
 is to be imputed, not to a want of charity or lib- 
 erality, but to the imperfection of human judg- 
 ment. 
 
 Our criterion here will then require us not only 
 to hold to the vital connection of truth with life, 
 but to the power of man to separate the truths 
 that are essential, not to the salvation of an indi- 
 vidual man as he may be dealt with by the Spirit 
 of God, but to Christianity as distinguished from 
 any other system. In such a belief there is no 
 narrowness. , In anything beyond this there is 
 laxity and feebleness. 
 
17 
 
 But thirdly, we inquire for the criterion of 
 liberality in respect of conduct. 
 
 The criterion of liberality in belief as respects 
 conduct must refer, either to the law which is the 
 standard of conduct, or to the results of trans- 
 gressions. 
 
 If we suppose a being morally perfect, the v 
 standard of his conduct must be a perfect moral 
 law. Such a law is required both as an expres- 
 sion of the moral character of God, and as a 
 condition of the moral perfection of his creatures. 
 It is the fountain of order, the guardian of rights, 
 the only impregnable basis of security for the 
 universe. Can it then be asked in the interest of 
 anything claiming to be liberality, that the per- 
 fection of such a law shall be impaired ? Ask 
 rather that the brightness of the sun should be 
 dimmed. Ask that God should abdicate his - 
 throne. If, as we have seen, liberality can have 
 nothing to do in impairing the rights and prerog- 
 atives of intellect in its relation to truth, much 
 less may it obliterate moral distinctions and lower 
 the standard of moral action. 
 
 But the real question respects conduct under a 
 law transgressed, with a possibility still remaining 
 of forgiveness and restoration to full obedience. 
 The question for every man, the one question on 
 which his destiny turns, is whether he shall ever 
 be brought into full harmony with a perfect 
 moral law ? 
 
 The law remaining, this must be so; and being 
 so, the principle here is obvious. • It is that 
 nothing can he allowed in conduct, whether in 
 
18 
 
 principle or in outward form, that would prevent 
 the speediest 'possible restoration of ourselves or 
 others to a full obedience. 
 
 But is not God merciful ? Does he not wish 
 his creatures to be happy V Yes ; but "shall we 
 continue in sin that grace may abound ? God 
 forbid/' Little do they know of God's mercy 
 who speak of it in such a connection. There is 
 iu it a depth and tenderness of which they have 
 no conception. But then its first element is a 
 regard for law, and any act of seeming mercy 
 that would, in the slightest degree, impair the 
 power of law, would not be mercy, but an act 
 of indifference or of weakness. These, indiffer- 
 ence and weakness, especially the former, are 
 constantly confounded with mercy, but no con- 
 trast could be greater. Mercy is not compassion ; 
 it is not simply benevolence. It is favor shown 
 in accordance with the honor of the law to the 
 guilty whose punishment is demanded by the 
 law; and the weakness and indifference that are 
 in it find their measure in the agony of the gar- 
 den and the death cry of the cross. What Christ 
 did, is the measure at once of the value of the 
 law and of the depth of love there is in the divine 
 mercy. Yes, God is merciful; so merciful that 
 he gave his Son for us, but not so merciful 
 that he will pardon one sin except through Him. 
 It is on mercy thus shown, revealing at once a 
 love unutterable and a firmness unalterable, that 
 we rely for quickening the consciences of men 
 and bringing them up to new obedience ; and 
 God forbid that we should give a fair name to 
 
19 
 
 anything that would weaken their sense of its 
 need, or diminish its power. Yes, God desires 
 the happiness of his creatures; and therefore 
 sets himself with the whole force of his nature 
 against transgression. He has provided for 
 every inlet of pleasure, and for every sponta- 
 neity of joy; but these can be permanent only 
 for those who have never wandered from the 
 inclosure of his law, or who have been brought- 
 back by One who has sought them with weary 
 and bleeding feet upon the dark mountains. 
 
 Let men but draw the inspiration of their lives 
 from such an apprehension of the cross of Christ, 
 thus coming into full sympathy with mercy in its 
 end as restoring them to obedience, and they will 
 easily dispose of many questions regarding con- 
 duct which perplex those who discuss them on a 
 lower plain. On the one side there is a tendency 
 to austerity and to forms in a legal or a supersti- 
 tious spirit ; and on the other to ignore the inhe- 
 rent and essential law of self-denial, and the fact 
 that a Christian is not of this world even as 
 Christ was not of this world. But he who has it 
 for his end to be conformed to a spiritual law, 
 will not rest in any physical suffering or outward 
 form ; nor, on the other hand, will he either make 
 amusements, now so much spoken of, an essential 
 part of his life, or rail at them. The question 
 with him will be where his heart is, whither he is 
 tending, and he will find both liberty and liberal- 
 ity under the great law of Christian self-denial, 
 that permits a man to do anything which will not 
 hinder his restoration to moral soundness in the 
 
20 
 k 
 sight of God. Yes, my friends, you may do any- 
 thing which will not counterwork in yourselves or 
 others the work which Christ came to do. In this 
 is liberty, and any liberality that would go beyond 
 this is license. 
 
 Thus are our criteria all practical. They are 
 simply the conditions requisite for the highest 
 mental and moral efficiency. Take away any- 
 thing from the sum or the excellence of being, or 
 from the value of truth, or from the power of the 
 mind to attain it, and by the very laws of mind 
 you put it under conditions less favorable for 
 mental robustness and efficiency. And so, if you 
 lower the standard of moral law; or take from 
 the conditions of mercy their legal element ; espe- 
 cially if any indulgence be allowed that for you 
 dims the light, or impairs the power of a self- 
 denying, humble, prayerful, spiritual life, you 
 preclude the possibility of the highest moral effi- 
 ciency. But it is in and through moral perfection 
 that man finds his true end, and no liberality that 
 would lower the tone of this can be admitted. 
 
 To some it may appear that the criteria pro- 
 posed are not legitimate, because they do not 
 respect directly what is true, but infer truth from 
 that which is best adapted to perfect man. But 
 such an inference will be least distrusted by those 
 who know most of the works of God. If we 
 may not make it, the desire for truth and good- 
 ness Avill thwart that for perfection, and there is, 
 in the constitution of man, a contradiction found 
 nowhere else. 
 
21 
 
 It is in the faith of this identity of truth with 
 life that you, my dear friends of the Graduating 
 Class, have been trained to regard the freest 
 discussion not only as a right, but as a duty. 
 You will bear me witness that you have been 
 called unto liberty. I bear you witness that, thus 
 far, in the fields we have traversed together, if 
 laboriously, yet pleasantly, you have known how 
 to bear the responsibilities of liberty by temper- 
 ing zeal with modesty. But now, in entering 
 upon more independent action, your period of life 
 and the whole drift of the times would lead you 
 to sympathize with those who make f liberality ' 
 and ? broad' church their watch-word; and you 
 will permit me to caution you not to abuse liberty. 
 An Apostle tells us there were those of old, and 
 possibly there may be some such now, who spoke 
 " great swelling words of vanity," and promised 
 liberty to others, while they were themselves " the 
 servants of corruption." Always liberty has been 
 assaiied in the name of liberty. There is nothing 
 new in this claim of liberality and demand for it. 
 It has existed from the time that a holy God laid 
 claim to exclusive worship, and established a 
 church that should recognize that claim. In that 
 claim was the root of a conflict that has been 
 waged, and will be, till one party or the other 
 shall triumph. Let men yield to that claim as 
 children and we ask no more. We can be satis- 
 fied with nothing less. In opposition to that 
 claim there was always a party among the Jews 
 inclined to affinity in their religion with the na- 
 tions around them. Were not those religions 
 
919 
 
 equally religion? Did they not bring into activ- 
 ity the religious nature ? Were not the people 
 sincere? And then the creed was less exclusive, 
 and the worship more attractive, and artistic, and 
 compatible with freedom in certain practices not 
 allowed by the Jewish law. Why should they be 
 so narrow as to stand aloof from all others'? The 
 whole history of the Jews under the Judges and 
 tlu- Kings is little else than an account of the 
 different phases of this struggle, the liberal party 
 being generally in the ascendant; and it was only 
 through the Babylonish captivity that God vindi- 
 cated his supremacy and eliminated the tendency 
 to idolatry. 
 
 Xor is Christianity, as claiming the absolute 
 supremacy of God over both the life and the 
 heart, less exclusive than was Judaism. It did, 
 indeed, throw down all barriers between the 
 Jews and others ; but it abated nothing of the 
 moral claims of God. So Christ regarded it. 
 He spoke of the "strait gate and the narrow 
 way"; and there is something ominous in the 
 sound of "broad church" when we hear Him 
 saying, "broad is the road that leadeth to 
 destruction." So the Apostles regarded it ; 
 and when that same principle of exclusiveness 
 that had been quiescent in Judaism became 
 aggressive in Christianity, then a liberality that 
 could tolerate and fellowship everything else 
 revealed its quality in the bitter hate of ten 
 bloody persecutions. And so it has been since. 
 Of everything else but a church that represents 
 the uncompromising and exclusive claims of God, 
 
23 
 
 liberality has spoken with a bland voice ; but 
 that she on the one hand, and bigotry and intol- 
 erance on the other, have equally persecuted. 
 That it is that ecclesiasticism has frowned upon 
 and imprisoned, and that literature and genius 
 have caricatured and mocked at, and do still. 
 Be it that in such a church there may be found 
 hypocrisies, pretence, dishonesty, meanness, nar- 
 rowness, and even inelegance. These are fair 
 game, but can never account for the intense 
 venom that has tipped the arrows that have 
 been shot at the church ; nor for the spiteful 
 and persistent vigor with which they have been 
 sped. These have come only as a part of that 
 "irrepressible conflict" of all time, that has 
 never failed to show itself where the claims 
 of God have been set up. 
 
 In connection with this conflict, in which no 
 man can be neutral, I wish for you, my friends, 
 no needless antagonism. Whatever may stand 
 in the way of a life under the inspiration of love 
 to God and men, and in sympathy with the reme- 
 dial power of Christianity, that meet and oppose; 
 but have no mere anti-isms, and make nothing a 
 point unless required by loyalty to truth and to 
 God. All wilfulness and false issues are mis- 
 chievous, and suffering from them, or fo» them, is 
 at best useless. But I do wish for you in this 
 conflict such a belief, and such an attitude towards 
 it, as not to imply that the martyrs were fools; 
 and as to make it possible that you should your- 
 selves become martyrs. ~No belief— no, I do not 
 say belief, I say faith involving trust — no faith 
 
24 
 
 can give to life its highest inspiration that a man 
 would not die for. Have such a faith. Live for 
 it; if need be, die for it; for in losing your life 
 thus you shall " keep it unto life eternal." 
 
 But shall we not, you say, belong to the party 
 of progress ? Yes, progress in light, in dis- 
 crimination, in the detection of all shams and 
 hypocrisies, and out of the church as well as in 
 it ; but especially progress in love, love to God 
 and love to man. In this only is the root of 
 a liberality that is not pretentious and hollow, 
 that will despise no one and persecute no one. 
 Tli rough this you shall grow into a liberality that 
 will embrace all that can be embraced without 
 defilement ; and all narrowness, bigotry, sectarian- 
 ism, will fall from you as naturally as its chrys- 
 alis covering foils from the insect that is finding 
 its wings. Come out then from all incrusta- 
 tions of narrowness into full Christian light and 
 liberty. Whomsover God loves, love ye ; whom- 
 soever he receives, receive ye. Join that great 
 party that is now seeking, as by a divine instinct, 
 A higher unity EST Christ. Ponder more the 
 import and the implications of his prayer, " Tit at 
 the ij all may he one? Progress? Yes, progress 
 in all in which that is possible ; but remember 
 that our great business here, our whole business 
 as practical, is progress in conformity to those 
 fixed conditions of growth and well-being in 
 which, as in the brightness of the sun, there is no 
 progress, but which God has perfected forever. 
 Learn what those conditions are. Accept your 
 place under them as creatures and as children ; 
 
25 
 
 comprehend, if you please, and if you can, how 
 conformity to those conditions promotes growth, 
 but know that except in conformity to them there 
 can be progress only in barren knowledge, or in 
 delusion and folly. 
 
 And now, my beloved friends, remembering 
 the past, so far as it is connected with you, only 
 with pleasure and thankfulness, and looking for- 
 ward to your future with hope and confidence, I 
 can only say, — 
 
 " The Lord bless you and keep you ; 
 
 " The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious 
 unto you ; 
 
 " The Lord lift up his couutenance upon you and give 
 you peace." 
 
OVERDUE. 
 
Stockton, Calif. 
 
 PAT. IAN. 2!, 1908 
 
 jGajsaps^sfefe 
 
 583134 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY