Luther was one of the many reformers who, feeling the necessity of freedom for themselves, never dream of according it to others. His self-hold, his 'me,' was masterful, and led him far astray from the inevitable logic of his perilous position. His 'I-ness' was so supreme that he mistook his own convictions for the truths of the Most High--a common mistake among reformers! He did not feel the sovereignty of man with regard to his fellow man, his positive inalienable right to deal with his God alone in matters of faith and religious conviction. The golden rule of our Master, 'Do as you would be done by,' seems simple and self-evident, and yet it is a late fruit in the garden of human culture. Mr. Roscoe says: 'When Luther was engaged in his opposition to the Church of Rome, he asserted the right of private judgment with the confidence and courage of a martyr. But no sooner had he freed his followers from the chains of papal domination, than he forget other in many respects equally intolerable: and it was the employment of his latter years to counteract the beneficial effects produced by his former labors.' Any system which saps the foundation of religious liberty, which forces itself between man and his Maker, cannot guarantee to us one of the main objects of all free governments--security in the pursuit of happiness. The Reformation did not give us religious freedom, therefore it did not give or suggest to us our democratic institutions. All that is true and pure in them springs from the very heart of Christianity itself. 'Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.' Much of the manifestation of the philosophy of freedom depends on individual character. Pope Alexander III., A.D. 1167, writes: 'Nature having made no slaves, all men have an equal right to liberty.' Luther, in 1524, says to the German peasants; 'You wish to emancipate yourselves from slavery, but slavery is as old as the world. Abraham had slaves, and St. Paul established rules for those whom the laws of nations reduced to that state.' Many of our modern priests reecho these sentiments! Guizot says: 'The emancipation of the human mind and _absolute_ monarchy triumphed simultaneously.' The truth is we want a philosophical history of the Reformation, written neither from a Catholic, Protestant, nor infidel point of view, that we may rightly estimate what we lost, what gained in its wild storms. In judging this, we should not quite forget that it was the Catholic Lord Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in 1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of _universal toleration_, while the Puritans were persecuting in New England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means eternal Progress, and its path is onward.--ED. CON.]