purpose for which the freedom has been given to us. I want to speak to
you then, while I may speak to-day, with regard to the freedom of the
Christian thought.

I want to claim, that which I believe with all my soul, that he who
lives in the faith of Jesus Christ lives in the freest action of his
mental powers, and there sees before him and makes himself a part of the
large world into which man shall enter, in which he has perfect liberty
and can exercise his powers as he could never have exercised them
without. It is not very strange to think that men should have sometimes
come to think that the religion of Jesus Christ was a slavery that was
laid upon the mind of man, because very often those who have been the
disciples of that religion, those who have been the preachers and
exponents of that religion, have claimed just exactly that thing. They
have seemed to say to themselves and to one another, to the world to
which they speak, that man does give up the powers of his reason when he
enters into the powers of his faith, when he enters into the great realm
of faith. Led by some sort of influence, led by some heresy with regard
to the capacity of man, or with regard to the dealing of God with man,
or with regard to the purposes of man's life upon the earth, they have
been content to say that man must give up the power of thought in order
that he might enter into the Christian life and attain to all the
purposes of the Christian discipline, they have been content to say that
man must give up the noblest power of his nature in order to enter upon
the highest life. Well might a man hesitate, hesitate whatever the
blessings that were offered to him in the fulness of the Christian
experience, if he were called upon to give up that which made the very
centre and glory of his life, that which linked him most immediately to
the God from whom he sprang. It would be as if in the storm the ship
should cast over its engine in order to save its own life. The ship