be dangerous to nations in Christian and for Christian times, because it affected the individual rights of men, and among them, the dearest of all, the liberty of conscience and the freedom of thought.  Well, of this danger, at least, the future of your country is free; because here, at least, in this, your happy land, religious liberty exists.  Your institutions left no power to your government to interfere with the religion of your citizens.  Here every man is free to worship God as he chooses to do.

And that is true, and it is a great glory of your country that it is true.  It is a fact which entitles to the hope that your nation will revive the law of Christ, even on earth.  However, the guarantee which your Constitution affords to religious liberty is but a negative part of a Christian government.  There are, besides that, positive duties to be fulfilled.  He who does no violence to the conscience of man, has but the negative merit of a man doing no wrong; but as he who does not murder, does not steal, and does not covet what his neighbour’s is, but by not stealing, not murdering, not coveting what our neighbour’s is, we did yet no positive good; a man who does not murder has not yet occasion to the title of virtuous man.  And here is precisely the infinite merit of the Christian religion.  While Moses, in the name of the Almighty God, ordered but negative degrees toward fellow-men, the Christian religion commands positive virtue.  Its divine injunctions are not performed by not doing wrong; it desires us to do good.  The doctrine of Jesus Christ is sublime in its majestic simplicity.  “Thou shalt love God above all, and love thy neighbour as thou lovest thyself.”

This sublime doctrine is the religion of love.  It is the religion of charity.  “Though I speak with the tongues of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.  Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”  Thus speaks the Lord, and thus speaking He gives the law, “Do unto others as thou desirest others to do unto thee.”  Now, in the name of Him who gave this law to humanity, to build up the eternal bliss and temporal happiness of mankind, in the name of that Eternal Legislator, I ask, is in that charity, in that fundamental law of Christianity, any limit of distinction drawn in man in his personal, and man in his national capacity?  Is it but a law for a man where he is alone, and can do but little good?  Is it no law more where two are together, and can do more good?  No law more when millions are together?  Am I in my personal adversities; is my aged mother in her helpless desolation; are my homeless sisters whom you feed to-day, that they may work to-morrow;