It is somewhat strange in this connection to remember, that we all wish to have our wives and daughters believers; that we all wish to bind to us those whom we love with more sacred bonds than those which we ourselves can supply. We are none of us loath to have those who keep our treasures, believe in some code higher than that of "honesty is the best policy." As Archbishop Whately said: "Honesty is the best policy, but he who is honest for that reason is not an honest man." Far be it from me to appear as an advocate of the divine right of kings; but I am no fit person for this particular task if I have only a sniff, or a guffaw, as an explanation of another's beliefs. History sparkles with the lives of men and women, who proclaimed themselves messengers and servants of God, obedient to him first, and utterly and courageously negligent of that feline commodity, public opinion. Every man, even to-day, "Who each for the joy of the working, and each in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are," has a grain of this salt of divine independence in him. To-day, even as in the days of Pericles: "It is ever from the greatest hazards that the greatest honors are gained," and the greatest hazard of all is to shut your visor and couch your lance and have at your task with a whispered: God and my Right! It is well to remember that under no government, whether democratic or aristocratic, has the individual ever been given any rights. He has always everywhere been pointed to his duties; his rights he must conquer for himself. The liberal in theology, as the liberal in politics, has perhaps leaned too far toward softness. The democratization of religion has gone on with the rest, and in our rebound from Calvin, and John Knox, and Jonathan Edwards, we have left all discipline and authority out of account. We have preached so persistently of the fatherhood of God, of his nearness to us, of his profound pity for us, that we have lost sight of his justice and his power. This nearness has become a sort of innocuous neighborliness, and God is looked upon not as a ruler, but as a vaporish good fellow whose chief business it is to forgive. We have substituted a feverish-handed charity for a sinewy faith, and are excusing our divorce from divinely imposed duties, by a cheerful but illicit intercourse with chance acquaintances, all of whom are dubbed social service. This Cashmere-shawl theology is as idle an interpretation of man's relation to the universe, and far more debilitating, than any that has gone before. When we come to measure rulers who make divine claims for their duties, from any such coign of flabbiness as this, no wonder we stand dumb. I am willing to concede that perhaps even an emperor has been baptized with the blood of the martyrs, and feels himself to be in all sincerity the instrument of God; if we are to understand this one, we must admit so much.