Awake to see these things, while health, and time, and life are granted to you. Let not political struggles and party strife make you forget your precious soul. Take any side in politics you please, and follow honestly your conscientious convictions; but never, never forget that there is a liberty far higher and more lasting than any that politics can give you. Rest not till that liberty is your own. Rest not till YOUR SOUL IS FREE. (2) Do you feel any desire to be free? Do you find any longing within you for a higher, better liberty than this world can give--a liberty that will not die at your death, but will go with you beyond the grave? Then take the advice I give you this day. Seek Christ, repent, believe, and be free. Christ has a glorious liberty to bestow on all who humbly cry to Him for freedom. Christ can take burdens off your heart, and strike chains off your inward man. "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." (John viii. 36.) Freedom like this is the secret of true happiness. None go through the world with such ease and content as those who are citizens of a heavenly country. Earth's burdens press lightly upon their shoulders; earth's disappointments do not crush them down as they do others; earth's duties and anxieties do not drink up their spirit. In their darkest hours they have always this sustaining thought to fall back on,--"I have something which makes me independent of this world: I am spiritually free." Freedom like this is the secret of being a good politician. In every age Christ's freemen have been the truest friends to law and order, and to measures for the benefit of all classes of mankind. Never, =never= let it be forgotten that the despised Puritans, two hundred years ago, did more for the cause of real liberty in England than all the Governments which ever ruled this land. No man ever made this country so feared and respected as Oliver Cromwell. The root of the most genuine patriotism is to be one of those whom Christ has made free. (3) Are you spiritually free? Then rejoice, and be thankful for your freedom. Care not for the scorn and contempt of man: you have no cause to be ashamed of your religion or your Master. He whose citizenship is in heaven (Phil. iii. 20), who has God for his Father, and Christ for his Elder Brother, angels for his daily guards, and heaven itself for his home, is one that is well provided for. No change of laws can add to his greatness: no extension of franchise can raise him higher than he stands in God's sight. "The lines are fallen to him in pleasant places, and he has a goodly heritage." (Psalm xvi. 6.) Grace now, and the hope of glory hereafter, are more lasting privileges than the power of voting for twenty boroughs or counties.