8 not as an orator to urge you to battle, but as a man of God. You will not expect me to decide between the issues of the day; for this place is the seat of spiritual, not of worldly and national, economical or political decisions. And my Master hath taught me not to prostitute it to the applause of the multitude. Whatever my opinions may be as a patriot and a citizen, they are but the opinions of a patriot and a citizen; and I must remember that I am not here as a citizen, but only as a priest; that this is not the public rostrum, but the house of God; that while it is the duty of the Christian citizen to study and, under Heaven, to assist in making, in his day and generation, the History of God the Providence, it is the sole duty of the priest, acting in his capacity as a priest, to preach and advance the Kingdom of God the Redeemer. It will be my aim, therefore, to display before you, to the best of my knowledge and ability, the real issue in which we are engaged, that you may enter upon it—as enter you must—not blindly and rashly, but calmly, as Christians ; to fetch your minds up to a realization of what it is you are about to settle; and second, now that we are surrounded by these mighty events, and must go through them, as a pastor to show you, at least in part, how as Christians you should conduct yourselves among them. In one respect mankind are like the individual. As a child, unable to know what is really best for them, they must be governed. But as they increase in knowledge, so they become more capable of governing themselves ; so at last is freedom their right, which none can deny or withhold except at his peril. This is the law of Providence, written in the revelation of history. Now, in Feudal times mankind were governed. Kings and liege-lords held in check their peoples, while Hildebrand on his Papal throne ruled kings with absolute sway. It was a social system, where each class of society looked not within itself for laws and guidance, but to a higher and less numerous, until finally the reins of power as they came up from below, all centered in the Pope’s hands, who capped the despotic pyramid. But in the eleventh century knowledge began to settle down from the apexes of society, and
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