A wiser sentiment than the foregoing, we venture to say, was never uttered from French lips: there is not a profounder truth in Montesquieu.
Yes! it is the possession and the practice of truth, religious truth, alone, that can make a people free. Whence is it that England and America have their superior freedom, and maintain it so steadily from year to year, and from age to age? It is because in those two countries the Word of God is widely spread, and the institutions of religion are revered and loved. From church and chapel, throughout the land, the truths of God's Holy Word are proclaimed weekly to the people. And in most private homes,—from castle-hall to cottage-fireside,—from the dwellings of the Sovereign and of the President to those of the mechanic and the peasant,—the Holy Bible is daily read; and from the family-circle gathered round it, there ascends, as from a domestic altar, the incense of worship, praise, and prayer, to the Lord on high. And will He desert such a people? will He be wanting to to those who put their trust in Him? Will he suffer foreign foes to invade, or domestic tyrants to enslave, them? No! He will keep them in security and peace, and uphold them in the blessings of civil and religious freedom. They will have nothing to fear, for the Omnipotent is their protector; they will be led in the right way, for the Omniscient is their guide; they will be ruled with the gentlest sway, so long as they thus worship and hold fast to Him, "whose service is perfect freedom," whose "yoke is easy and His burthen light."
To those, then, who are looking with grief and sym-
elucidation of this theme, he by no means insisted that Protestantism, his own religion, was exclusively in his view."
