are discussing secular topics. With the thoroughly religious man it is solely a question of what God wishes him to do. In religion this affords the only latitude for discussion, and even that disappears largely when the will of God is placed before the people in the shape of "revealed" writings. Fortunately for the world "inspired" writings have never been so clearly penned as to leave no room for doubt as to what they actually meant. Clarity of meaning has never been one of the qualities of divine authorship. In this connection it is significant that the first form of democratic government of which we have any clear record should have been in freethinking, sceptical Greece. Equally notable is it that in both Rome and Greece the measure of mental toleration was greater than it has ever been in other countries before or since. In Rome to the very end of the Pagan domination there existed no legislation against opinions, as such. The holders of certain opinions might find themselves in uncomfortable positions now and then, but action against them had to rest on some ground other than that which was afterwards known as heresy. There existed no law in the Roman Empire against freedom of opinion, and those who are familiar with Mr. H. C. Lea's classic, _History of the Inquisition_, will recall his account of the various tactics adopted by the Christian Church to introduce measures that would accustom the public mind to legislation which should establish the principle of persecution for opinion.[12] In the end the Church succeeded in effecting this, and its success was registered in the almost unbelievable degradation of the human intellect which was exhibited in the Christian world for centuries. So complete was this demoralization that more than a thousand years later we find men announcing as a most daring principle a demand for freedom of discussion which in old Greece and Rome was never officially questioned. Christianity not merely killed freedom wherever it established itself, but it came very near killing even the memory of it.