ce of this Principle, 185.--_Religious
Liberty_, 187.--Persecution for Opinion's Sake, 189.--Spirit of the
Founders of Pennsylvania, 190.--Constitutional Provisions,
193.--_Safeguards to True Liberty_, 194.--Laws on Religion and Morals,
197.--Forms of Government, 200.--_A Republican State_, 202.--The Last
Two Hundred Years, 203.

LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION.

A rare spectacle has been spreading itself before the face of heaven
during these last months.

Millions of people, of many nations and languages, on both sides of
the ocean, simultaneously engaged in celebrating the birth of a mere
man, four hundred years after he was born, is an unwonted scene in our
world.

Unprompted by any voice of authority, unconstrained by any command of
power, we join in the wide-ranging demonstration.

In the happy freedom which has come to us among the fruits of that
man's labors we bring our humble chaplet to grace the memory of one
whose worth and services there is scarce capacity to tell.

HUMAN GREATNESS.

Some men are colossal. Their characters are so massive, and their
position in history is so towering, that other men can hardly get
high enough to take their measure. An overruling Providence so endows
and places them that they affect the world, turn its course into new
channels, impart to it a new spirit, and leave their impress on all
the ages after them. Even humble individuals, without titles, crowns,
or physical armaments, have wrought themselves into the very life of
the race and built their memorials in the characteristics of epochs.

History tells of a certain Saul of Tarsus, a lone and friendless man,
stripped of all earthly possessions, forced into battle with a
universe of enthroned superstition, encompassed by perils which
threatened every hour to dissolve him, who, pressing his way over
mountains of difficulty and through seas of suffering, and dying a
martyr to his cause, gave to Europe a living God and to the nations
another and an everlasting King.

We likewise read of a certain Christopher Columbus, brooding in lowly
retirement upon the structure of the physical universe, ridiculed,
frowned on by the learned, repulsed by court after court, yet
launching out into the unknown seas to find an undiscovered
hemisphere, and opening the way for persecuted Liberty to cradle the
grand empire of popular rule amid the golden hills of a new and
independent continent.

And in this category stands the name