Liberty, How grand is the promise of Liberty, how poor is the harvest. How noble it is as a path, how uncertain as a goal. Lord Action, the close friend of Gladstone, says in his "Essay of Liberty, No obstacle has been. so constant and so difficult to overcome as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true Liberty." At a distance it has Icoked so fair, so desirable. From the standpoint of the imprisoned mind, the fettered will, the persecuted conscience it has' seemed to be man's best ally. And lives have been laid down generously by the thousand in order secure it.
But whereas Liberty invoked and trusted by idealists and optimists of our it has none the less for boundless confusion and sorrow, For want of right management and proper discipline it has proved to be, tyrannical. Instead of serving the cause of righteousness and truth it fas usurped authority in its own name and lent itself to crime and folly. "But what wilt thou say when God shall set this friend over thee, seeing thou hast thyself instructed it against thee The Abuse of Libersy Turn back the pages of history. Remember how the doctrine of Liberty was made to sanction the worst evils of Industrialism. Ninety years ago the cry of the workers in English factories w s, published abroad, and ten years afterwards the ease of the prisoners in the mines was presented. But those iniquitous conditions of money King were defended in the sacred name of Liberty. As if Liberty thee oes not make for the good of hugnanity is not thereby e: ndemned Or again consider how the name of Liberty Has been invoked for the protection of vices. Many a man hag persuaded himself that Liberty means the right to spend the bulk of his wages on drink and to neglect his children, or to live on the earnings of prostitutes and the profits of slume, a9 if he was delivered to do these things." These people. will borrow a virtuous expression for the moment to justify crimes that degrade society, and assert that means to do as you please and domin the consequences. Isn't it true that we have "ifstrueted" a promised friend to be an actual ithe truth is man is not made for Atberty. "But Liberty, like the Sabbath and every other Lessing. was! nade for man—for man observe, not men, not for the individual but for human welfare. And when Liberty ceases to be the servant of God it becomes the tyrant of man.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.