bond uniting the human soul with the divine, it does not recognize or feel. It is this which gives significance and importance to infidel harangues; it is this spirit which spreads beneath and behind them. The harangues are merely the surface pustules, while the disease is within. They are the red and sulphurous flames, while the fires are underneath. And yet they multiply! The business of this city of Portland could not be carried on on the principles of these harangues. There is not a bank or an insurance company here that would not have to shut its doors if it posted within its walls, “This is an agnostic establishment. [Applause.] It is carried on upon these principles: that there is no God about whom we know anything; there is no hereafter probable; man came out of the monkey; and there is no moral law.” Let such sentiments prevail in this city, and it would have been better if the fire of a few years ago had swept away every house within it, and left nothing but the bay and the beach on which to plant a new town. And yet men love to crowd halls and pay money in order to hear these infidel speculations which are in substance as old as the ages. And thus it comes to pass that religious thought loses its power among those who are not directly touched by such harangues,—that the influence widens continually to make the Bible a neglected book, and to make the Sabbath a secular day, to make the Church a mere convocation of people coming together at leisure to hear a lecture. It is at such times that the spirit of liberalism, as it is called, in religious speculations tending all the time to loosen the bonds and unstring the strength of the Gospel of Christ, finds opportunity and incitement and comes more widely to prevail. Liberalism! I repudiate the term. [Applause.] I do not understand what function liberality has either in the record or in the interpretation of facts. I do not understand how he is a liberal mathematician who makes his calculations bend to the preferences of himself and of his pupils. I do not understand how he is a liberal chemist who feels at liberty to play fast and loose with the principles of his science, and will not quite affirm whether gunpowder will explode or not when fire touches it. How is he a liberal chart-maker who rubs out all the reefs and rocks and bars and warning headlands from his maps, and shows a smooth coast-line with nothing but smiling shores and welcoming bays? How is he a liberal interpreter of the globe who denies the granite above and the fire beneath, and affirms that the whole is built, if we only knew it, of excellently selected wood-pulp? What possible province has liberality in the record of facts or in the interpretation of them? I understand perfectly what liberality means as toward the opinions of others who differ from us. I understand what liberality means as toward the character of others who are entirely opposed in opinion and in action to us.