I will limit the question by defining it.  The idea of humanity is the idea of the worth and consequently of the rights of each individual man.  It is the idea of liberty; not of liberty interpreted by passion and selfishness as the inauguration of the license which violates right, but of liberty interpreted by reason and conscience as the limit which the action of each man encounters in the right of his neighbor.  We are not speaking here of the equality of political rights, which is not always a guarantee of veritable liberty.  We are speaking of a social condition such that man, in the exercise of his faculties, in the manifestation of his thoughts, in his efforts for the causes which he loves, so long as he does not violate the rights of others, does not meet with an arbitrary power to arrest him.  Still farther to limit our subject, we shall speak of the most important manifestation of that liberty—­liberty of conscience, of which religious liberty is the most ordinary and most complete manifestation.  This is only one of the points of the subject, but it is a point which in reality supposes and includes all the rest.  This liberty—­whence does it come?

It does not come from paganism.  Paganism, with its national religions, could only produce fanaticism or doubt.  Each people having its own particular religion, to exterminate the foreigner was to serve the cause of the gods of the country.  A war-cry descended from the Olympus of each several nation—­that Olympus which the gods quitted, in case of need, to take part in the quarrels of men.  Did reason perceive the nothingness of these national divinities?  Then scepticism appeared.  The idea of the supreme God being unsettled with all, and wholly obscured for the crowd, when men ceased to believe in the gods of the nation, they lost all belief whatsoever.  For this cause doubt prevailed so widely at the decline of the ancient world.  Those pantheons in which all religions were received, welcomed, protected, are the ever-memorable temples of scepticism.  Now you know what voice made itself heard, when the ancient civilization was enfeebled by the spirit of doubt:  “Henceforth there is neither Greek nor barbarian, bond nor free.  Ye are all brethren, and for all there is one God, and one truth:”  here behold the root of scepticism severed.  And the same voice added:  “This only God is the lawful Owner of His creatures; and when you presume to do violence to the consciences which belong to Him, you know not by what spirit you are animated:”  here behold the fountain of fanaticism dried up.  God is acknowledged; He is the Master of souls:  faith founds liberty.