their brethren and
their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principle of
community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men
think. No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and
temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many
noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.

With wonder and sorrow I go back in thought to the ages of
intolerance and bigotry. I see Jesus received with scorn and nailed
on the cross. I see his followers hounded and tortured and burned. I
am present where the finer spirits that revolt from the superstition
of the Middle Ages are accused of impiety and stricken down. I behold
the children of Israel reviled and persecuted unto death by those who
pretend Christianity with the tongue; I see them driven from land to
land, hunted from refuge to refuge, summoned to the felon's place,
exposed to the whip, mocked as they utter amid the pain of martyrdom a
confession of the faith which they have kept with such splendid
constancy. The same bigotry that oppresses the Jews falls tiger-like
upon Christian nonconformists of purest lives and wipes out the
Albigenses and the peaceful Vaudois, "whose bones lie on the mountains
cold." I see the clouds part slowly, and I hear a cry of protest
against the bigot. The restraining hand of tolerance is laid upon the
inquisitor, and the humanist utters a message of peace to the
persecuted. Instead of the cry, "Burn the heretic!" men study the
human soul with sympathy, and there enters into their hearts a new
reverence for that which is unseen.

The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader
significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or
creed; and thinkers of great soul like Lessing challenge the world to
say which is more godlike, the hatred and tooth-and-nail grapple of
conflicting religions, or sweet accord and mutual helpfulness. Ancient
prejudice of man against his brother-man wavers and retreats before
the radiance of a more generous sentiment, which will not sacrifice
men to forms, or rob them of the comfort and strength they find in
their own beliefs. The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the
next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood
between sincere men of all denominations. The optimist rejoices in the
affectionate sympathy between Catholic heart and Protestant heart
which finds a gratifying expression in the