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THE BIBLE THE CHARTER OF LIBERTY.

"Out from the heart of nature rolled

The burthens of the Bible old,

The Litanies of nations came
Like the volcano's tongue of flame;

Up from the burning core below

The Canticles of Love and Woe."

EMERSON.

THE BIBLE is the charter of human liberty, and in the teachings of that sacred volume are to be found the glad tidings that all men are free and equal, not only before each other, but in the sight of God. So long as the Scriptures were confined to the few, so long as its pages were closed to the multitude, so long the world rested in darkness, and oppression existed throughout all lands. From the time of the invention of printing, and the consequent circulation of the Bible, do we date the commencement of those struggles against despotism which finally resulted in the establishment of our free government.

It cannot be controverted, that the Bible was the cause of the early revolutions that startled kings from their thrones, and shook the foundations of the Vatican. It taught men the rights of the citizen, and these led them to examine the claims of rulers. It questioned traditions and authorities, and rejected them if not in accordance with the humble but sublime teachings of Christ. Finding that the Creator looked upon all men with equal favor, all laws not in conformity with this principle were pronounced unauthorized and unjust. The inculcation of the direct confession of sins to the Throne of Grace, swept away at a blow the assumptions of priestcraft, and made man responsible for his actions to his own conscience and his God. Multitudes, who before the reading of the Scriptures were debased,

made self-reliance the prevailing feature of the age. The light that poured into the civilized world, overwhelmed society with new views and aspirations. Every page of the sacred volume strengthened the minds of the reformers, and shed a lustre over the memories of the martyrs who had through all time died in defence of liberty. The very foundations of society rocked to the centre; the divine right of kings, and the profane assumptions of priests, were scoffed at.

In England, and on the Continent, the standard of rebellion was raised, and thousands, filled with new-born zeal, fearlessly asserted the glorious promises of man's regeneration. The triumphs of humanity, of civilization, and of Christianity, which are the boasts of the nineteenth century, would have been unknown, and the pall of the dark ages would still be upon us, were it not for the free circulation of the Bible. This great truth has always been acknowledged with the greatest solemnity by our Revolutionary fathers. Washington and his compatriots entered upon no serious duties, without the reading of the Scriptures, and an humble acknowledgment of dependence upon Divine Wisdom for instruction in council, and strength in the hour of battle. In all hours of suffering, in the darkest days that tried men's souls, it was the encouragement held forth in the sacred volume that kept our sires from despondency, and strengthened their arms in the noble thought, that their cause was sanctioned by the God of battles. The original demands of the men, whose sufferings and martyrdom form so large a page in the early struggles for human freedom, was, that the Bible might be made free, and that its teachings might illume the hearts and consciences of all men.

The question, then, comes home seriously to every conscience, Can our present form of government exist if the Bible be excluded from the public eye? Are those persons who fear its influence, and do all in their power to suppress its circulation, friends to liberty? Are those of our citizens who consent to be deprived of the Bible, and avoid its pages as if they were possessed of contagion, capable of self-government? We can imagine individuals who may be good

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citizens without the enlightenment of the precepts of the Holy Book, but we cannot conceive of a nation prospering without sensibly feeling and acknowledging their influence. Man is a religious being, and upon that immortal principle rests the security of all human rights; he must therefore either have his morals cultivated by his own intelligent pursuit of good from the fountain of truth, or he must consent to put himself in ecclesiastical servitude, and have his conscience controlled by others.

The American is distinguished from all other people, because he thinks for himself, and thus displays the possession of the very essence of self-government. He reads the Bible, learns from its precepts the distinctions between right and wrong, that all men are equal in the sight of Heaven, that he must love his neighbor as himself, and that he alone is responsible to God for his acts. This high state of intellectual and moral culture never was obtained in perfection except under American institutions, and the accomplishment of it was heralded as the greatest triumph of humanity from the bondage and oppression of ages.

Any doctrine, therefore, that teaches the suppression of the Bible, must be inimical to liberty-must be treason to the preservation of the Republican character; and whether it is advocated by the avowed/ skeptic, or more dangerously urged under the guise of religion, in both cases the pernicious tendency is the same. Infidelity would strike at the foundations of all liberty, by destroying the authority which sanctifies its existence: religion, falsely so called, would accomplish the same object, on the ground that the individual is not in matters of conscience capable of deciding for himself.

The country has been agitated about the reading of the Scriptures in our public schools. The Romish priests have protested against such an enormity, and the usefulness of the noblest institution of our country has been impaired and imperiled, in the effort to drive the book from the teacher's desk. In many cases our American populations have yielded to the assumption, that certain American children could be injured by hearing its Divine precepts, instead of

taking the position, that children reared in such bigotry were in the hands of those who neither sympathized with nor understood our institutions; for it is certain beyond contradiction, that those who persist in such strange exclusiveness have still lingering in their minds a reverence for absolutism not in accordance with universal liberty.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a Romanist, and one of the signes of the Declaration of Independence, is constantly quoted as an evidence of the liberty-loving spirit of his Church. That he was a patriot and loved his country there cannot be a doubt; but when he associated himself with Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and other fathers of the Revolution, he surrendered, at the very commencement of his political career, the identity of Romanism on the altar of universal toleration, else he could not have participated in the stirring and glorious scenes enacted around him. Had he retained the spirit, if he ever possessed it, that would banish the Bible from the public eye, he would have solemnly protested against the reading of the Scriptures at the openings of the convention that adopted the Declaration of Independence, and if it had been persisted in, he would have thrown up his seat and his solemn duties, and retired in indignation, announcing to the astonished patriots about him, that he was afraid to hear that book read in his presence-that in so doing he would be disobeying the orders of his ghostly father;-it was because Charles Carroll did not thus act, because he repudiated such control of his conscience, that he did sign the immortal Declaration of our Independence, and engraved his name upon a monument that will cause it to be remembered with honor as long as virtue is cherished among mankind.

The Council of Trent decrees, "That no Bible shall be held or read except by priests-that no Bible shall be sold without a license, except upon the pains and penalties of that mortal sin that is neither to be forgiven in this world or the next."* By the priests of the

* See Father Paul Sarpis' History of the Council of Trent.

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