Jesus Christ and which we call the Christian life. We have claimed that
it is the highest of all lives because it is the freest of all lives,
that it is the freest of all lives because it is the highest, and it
may be that we have thought that it was true with regard to the active
life in which men live, it may be that we have somehow persuaded
ourselves, that it has seemed to us as if there were evidence that a man
who lived his life in the following of Jesus Christ was a free man in
regard to his activity. But now there comes to us the other thought, and
it is impossible for us to meet together as we have met together again
and again here without asking with regard to the other region of man's
life and how it is with man there, for there are a great many people, I
believe, who think that while the Christian faith offers to man a noble
sphere of action and sets free powers that would otherwise remain
unchanged, yet when we come to the region of thought or belief, there it
is inevitable that man should know himself, when he accepts the faith of
Jesus Christ, it is inevitable that there the man should become less
free than it has been thought that he was before the blessed Saviour
was accepted as the Master and the ruler of his life. Men say to
themselves and to one another, "Yes, I shall be freer to act, I shall be
nobler in my action, but I shall certainly enchain mind and spirit, I
shall certainty bind myself to think, away from the rich freedom of
thought in which I have been inclined to live." We make very much of
free thought in these days. Let us always remember that free thought
means the opportunity to think, and not the opportunity not to think. We
rejoice in the way in which our fathers came to this country and in
their children perpetuated the purpose of their coming, in order that
they might have freedom to worship God. Do we worship God? Simply to
have attained freedom and not to use freedom for its true purpose, not
to live within the world of freedom according to the life which is given
to us there--that is to do dishonor to the freedom, to disown the