and half-realized world, but as a man who, for the present, has laid a
burden and bondage upon his life. That is never the tone of Christ; it
is never the tone of the Christian gospel. When a man turns away from
his sins and enters into energetic holiness, when a man sacrifices his
own self-indulgence and goes forth a pure servant of his God and his
fellow-men, there is only one cry in the whole gospel of that man, and
that is the cry of freedom. As soon as he can catch that, as soon as I
can feel about my friend, who has become a better man, that he has
become a larger and not a smaller, a freer and not a more imprisoned
man, as soon as I lift up my voice and say that the man is free, then I
understand him more fully, and he becomes a revelation to me in the
higher and richer life which is possible for me to live. But think of
it for yourselves, for a moment, and ask what freer life really is. Try
to give a definition of liberty, and I know not what it can be said to
be except something of this kind: Liberty is the fullest opportunity for
man to be and do the very best that is possible for him. I know of no
definition of liberty, that oldest and dearest phrase of men, and
sometimes the vaguest also, except that. It has been perverted, it has
been distorted and mystified, but that is what it really means: the
fullest opportunity for a man to do and be the very best that is in his
personal nature to do and to be. It immediately follows that everything
which is necessary for the full realization of a man's life, even though
it seems to have the character of restraint for a moment, is really a
part of the process of his enfranchisement, is the bringing forth of him
to a fuller liberty. You see a man coming forward and offering himself
as one of the defenders of his country in his country's need. You see
him standing at the door where men are being received as recruits into
the army of the country. He wants liberty. He wants to be able to do
that which he cannot do in his poor, personal isolation here at home. He
wants the badge which will give him the right to go forth and meet the