It leaves to every churchman liberty to believe and stand by his church according to his own conviction. It stands for this; the absolute liberty of each individual man to think, to write, to speak, to act, according to the best light within him; limited as to his fellows, by the condition that he shall not use that liberty so as to injure them; limited in the other direction, by those tremendous laws which are laws in spite of all rhetoric, and in spite of all logic. If I put my finger into the fire, that fire burns. If I do a wrong, that wrong remains. If I hurt my neighbor, the wrong reacts upon myself. If I would try to escape what you call judgment, what you call penalty, I cannot escape the working of the inevitable-law that follows a cause by effect; I cannot escape that inevitable law--not the creation of some dark monster flashing through the skies--but, as I believe, the beneficent creation which puts into the spiritual life the same control of law that guides the material life, which wisely makes me responsible, that in the solemnity of that responsibility I am bound to lift my brother up and never to drag my brother down. REPLY OF COLONEL INGERSOLL. The first gentleman who replied to me took the ground boldly that expression is not free--that no man has the right to express his real thoughts--and I suppose that he acted in accordance with that idea. How are you to know whether he thought a solitary thing that he said, or not? How is it possible for us to ascertain whether he is simply the mouthpiece of some other? Whether he is a free man, or whether he says that which he does not believe, it is impossible for us to ascertain. He tells you that I am about to take away the religion of your mothers. I have heard that said a great many times. No doubt Mr. Coudert has the religion of his mother, and judging from the argument he made, his mother knew at least as much about these questions as her son. I believe that every good father and good mother wants to see the son and the daughter climb higher upon the great and splendid mount of thought than they reached. You never can honor your father by going around swearing to his mistakes. You never can honor your mother by saying that ignorance is blessed because she did not know everything. I want to honor my parents by finding out more than they did. There is another thing that I was a little astonished at--that Mr. Coudert, knowing that he would be in eternal felicity with his harp in his hand, seeing me in the world of the damned, could yet grow envious here to-night at my imaginary monument. And he tells you--this Catholic--that Voltaire was an exceedingly good Christian compared with me. Do you know I am glad that I have compelled a Catholic--one who does not believe he has the right to express his honest thoughts--to pay a compliment to Voltaire simply because he thought it was at my expense?