Men and women who are orthodox are generally so for the same reason that they are English or French--they were born in England or France, and cannot help the good or ill fortune of their birth-place. Their orthodoxy is no higher virtue than their nationality. Men are good and true of every nation and of every faith; but there are more good and true men in nations where civilisation has made progress, and amongst faiths which have been modified by high humanising influences. Men are good not because of their orthodoxy, but in spite of it; their goodness is the outgrowth of their humanity, not of their orthodoxy. Heresy is necessary to progress; heresy in religion always precedes an endeavour for political freedom. You cannot have effectual political progress without wide-spread heretical thought. Every grand political change in which the people have played an important part, has been preceded by the popularisation of heresy in the immediately earlier generations. Fortunately, ignorant men cannot be real heretics, so that education must be the hand-maiden to heresy. Ignorance and superstition are twin sisters. Belief too often means nothing more than prostration of the intellect on the threshold of the unknown. Heresy is the pioneer, erect and manly, striding over the forbidden line in his search for truth. Heterodoxy develops the intellect, orthodoxy smothers it. Heresy is the star twinkle in the night, orthodoxy the cloud which hides this faint gleam of light from the weary travellers on life's encumbered pathway. Orthodoxy is well exemplified in the dark middle ages, when the mass of men and women believed much and knew little, when miracles were common and schools were rare, and when the monasteries on the hill tops held the literature of Europe. Heresy speaks for itself in this nineteenth century, with the gas and electric light, with cheap newspapers, with a thousand lecture rooms, with innumerable libraries, and at least a majority of the people able to read the thoughts the dead have left, as well as to listen to the words the living utter. The word heretic ought to be a term of honour; for honest, clearly uttered heresy is always virtuous, and this whether truth or error; yet it is not difficult to understand how the charge of heresy has been generally used as a means of exciting bad feeling. The Greek word [------] which is in fact our word heresy, signifies simply, selection or choice. The he etiq philosopher was the one who had searched and found, who, not content with the beaten paths, had selected a new road, chosen a new fashion of travelling in the inarch for that happiness all humankind are seeking.