I deem it of great importance that this point should be fully and often presented, because it is vital, and because there are constant attempts made to obscure it. Whatever elevates the individual, whatever gives him worth in his own estimation and that of others, whatever invests him with moral dignity, must be favorable both to pure morality and to civil liberty. Hence it is that these are both incidental results of christianity. They are not the gifts which she came to bestow--these are life and immortality. They are not the white raiment in which her followers are to walk in the upper temple; but they are the earthly garments with which she would clothe the nations--they are the brightness which she leaves in her train as she moves on towards heaven, and calls on men to follow her there. These belong to her alone. Infidels may filch her morality, as they have often done, and then boast of their discoveries. But in their hands that morality is lopped off from the body of faith on which it grew, and produces no fruit. They may boast, as they do, of a liberty which they never could have achieved. But under its protection they advance doctrines and advocate practices which would corrupt it into license. Their only strength lies in endeavoring, in the sacred name of liberty, to corrupt the virtuous, and to excite the hatred of the vicious against those restraints without which liberty cannot exist, and society has no ground of security. "Promising liberty to others, they are themselves the servants of corruption." Liberty cannot exist without morality, nor general morality without a pure religion. The doctrine thus stated is fully confirmed by history. The reformation by Luther was made on strictly religious grounds. He found an opposition between the decrees of the Pope and the commands of God, and it was the simple purpose, resolutely adhered to, to obey God rather than men, that caused Europe to rock to its centre. In the train of this religious reformation civil liberty followed, but became settled and valuable only as religious liberty was perfected. It was every where on the ground of conscience towards God that the first stand was taken, and in those countries where the struggle for religious liberty commenced but did not succeed, as in Spain and Italy, civil liberty has found no resting place for the sole of her foot to this day. It is conceded even by Hume that England owes her civil liberty to the Puritans, and the history of the settlement and progress of this country as a splendid exemplification of the principle in question, needs but to be mentioned here.