But let there be no base understanding of freedom. The new John the Baptist must not be a cowboy, saying, "The kingdom of highwaymen is at hand." As a person when in perfect bodily health knows not from any intimation from the respective parts that he has a stomach, a brain, or a heart, so a person when living in perfect freedom is unconscious of law, of creed, of custom. The healthy man physically is the free man physically; the healthy man mentally is the free man mentally; the healthy man morally is the free man morally; liberty of the individual is health of the individual, and a free man means a man who is true and obedient to all natural laws. * * * * * There is a misunderstanding of freedom upon the one side, and a misrepresentation of it upon the other, that make it hazardous for one to employ the word. To connect this word with morality in the eyes of many is to confound the Madonna with Mary Magdalene. It is to start the ghost of Don Juan. The conservatism of society has ever regarded liberty as the black flag of the moral marauder, the emblem of a piratical intention upon the casket of the world that contains the jewels of honor, justice, virtue and social order. So persistently and malignantly has freedom been represented as a wrecker's light, kindled only to lure to destruction, that to represent it as worthy to be trusted is to arouse the spirit which pursued Voltaire to his grave with a lie, erected a shaft of calumny over the tomb of Paine, and which now, with the coward's weapon of slander, attacks the living who refuse to acknowledge that the voice of the Church is the voice of God. But nevertheless we believe with Burns that: Upo' this tree there grows sic fruit, Its virtues a' can tell, man; It raises man aboon the brute, It maks him ken himsel', man; Gif ance the peasant taste a bite, He's greater than a lord, man, And ni' the beggar shares a mite Of a' he can afford, man. And so we exclaim in the words of one of our own true poets: Always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved, And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee. You have all heard of the man who refused to open his eyes for a year, and who declared that during that time nothing could be seen on account of the darkness. But the endeavor to perpetuate old errors by keeping the eyes closed to the facts of science, the truths of philosophy, and the progress of the human race, has not been crowned with success. The further attempt to convert the world to what James Parton calls a "kitchen religion" is merely waste of power. The preaching of Christianity is making "much ado about nothing." What we want is manhood and womanhood.