Finally, the way is sure to lead every life which follows it, and is willing to pay the price for the possession of truth, into the region of spiritual peace. No other way of life permits this comprehensive sense of peace and assurance. Apart from it we have but the unremitting and bitter struggle for existence, the enforcement of national self-seeking, the temporary victory of the strong, the hell of the weak and the poor; yet, at the same time, no peace even for the strong, who have their little day of power, but live in daily fear that this power will fail and leave them at the mercy of the wolves, their neighbors. Meantime, on every page of the world’s history, and in the experience of daily life, God writes the opposite teaching, that out of the midst of evil issues at last the mastery of the good; and that, in modern as in ancient time, the meek both inherit and control the earth. History is not a record of despotic control like that of a Roman Cæsar, effective and intelligent, but necessarily involving a progressive degeneration of his subjects; it is a story of progressive amelioration in moral standards and achievements; and this fact of moral progress is the most convincing proof of the being of God. Thus it happens that to one who loves liberty and who reads history, the logic of thought leads to faith in God. Without such faith it is difficult to believe in human progress through freedom, or to view the movement of the modern world with hope. Without such faith the popular agitations of the time are disquieting and alarming, and the only refuge of the spirit is in submission to some human authority either of Church or of State. Without such faith it would be increasingly impossible to maintain a democratic republic like Switzerland in the midst of the autocratic monarchies of Europe. With profound truthfulness the Swiss Parliament at Aarau opened its session with these simple words: “Our help is in the Lord our God, who hath made heaven and earth.” And, finally, without political liberty there would be but a brief survival of religious liberty itself, and it too would be supplanted by a condition of servitude. A State-Church is a self-contradictory expression. State and Church alike need self-government for self-development. A free Church and a free State are not only most representative of Christianity, but are beyond doubt the forms of Christian citizenship which are to survive. Not compulsion, nor any form of authority, will in the end dominate the world, but freedom, in all its forms and its effects. The end of social evolution is to be the free obedience of men and nations to the moral order of the world.