But the reverend colonel here affirms nothing not affirmed by Christianity, nor any thing more than belongs to all men. Natural religion is simply the natural law, the moral law, prescribed to every man through his reason by the end for which he is created, and is included in the Christian religion as essential to the Christian character. What the free religionist does is not to affirm any thing not universally insisted on by the Catholic Church, but to deny all religion but universal natural religion; that is, he simply denies supernatural revelation, and the supernatural order, or that there is any reality broader than nature or above it. Free religion, as such, is, then, not affirmative, but purely negative; the negation of all religions in so far as they assert the supernatural. The real thought and design of the men and women composing the association is to get rid of every thing in every religion that transcends or professes to transcend nature. They make no direct war on the church or even on the sects, we concede; for they take it for granted that when people are once fully persuaded that nature is all, and that only natural religion is or can be true, all else will gradually die out of itself. Mrs. Lucy Stone agrees in this with the others, and does not disguise her thought. She says: "We come into the world, I believe, every one of us, with all that is needful in ourselves, if we will only trust it--all that is needful to help us on and up to the very highest heights to which a human being can ever climb; but we have covered it over by dogma and creed and sectarian theory, and by our own misdeeds, until these angel voices that are in us cease to be heard; not totally cease--I do not believe they ever totally cease--but they become less and less audible to us. But if we learn to heed their faintest whisper, reverently and obediently, I believe that there is no path where the soul asks you to go that you may not safely tread. It may carry you to the burning, fiery furnace, but you will come out, and the smell of fire even will not be on your garments. It may compel you into the lion's den, but the wild beast's mouth will be shut. You may walk where scorpions are in the way of duty, and you will not be hurt. It is this 'inner light;' it is not a text, it is not a creed, but it is this in ourselves which, if trusted, will lead us into all truth.