blessing, from Him receives direction concerning the aim and
course of life, and as its first and last and central principle
aspires to "do all things to his glory." Led to Him as the Creator by
his works, which it contemplates, reminded of Him as the Almighty
Ruler by his providence, the aspects of which it reverently studies,
and taught to call Him the Father by Christ, to whose instructions it
yields a joyful obedience, it revolves around the Supreme Being as its
light and security, through its relation to whom it is safe amidst the
world's commotions and blessed in life's decay.

The idea of man--this is the other point of departure from which
religion will seek its appropriate issues; of man in those attributes
which are the universal endowment of our race, and not in the
artificial prerogatives which distinguish a part of mankind--one
nation, or one class in society; of man the partaker of a common
humanity, before whose indestructible capacities, rights and destinies
the distinctions of colour, wealth and office fade away, as the glare
of night-lamps which shed illumination over a few feet of space before
the beams of the sun which enwrap the whole land in their brightness.
This idea of man, as everywhere the creature of God, and therefore
dependent, everywhere the child of God, and therefore in his nature
proclaiming himself of a nobler lineage than if he could show an
ancestral register bearing the names of half the monarchs of the
earth, as everywhere the _same_ in virtue of his indefeasible
possession of reason, conscience and immortality, and therefore
entitled to fraternal treatment from his fellow-men,--this idea whence
came it? Where did our fathers learn that men were "born free and
equal"? From the religion of the New Testament, for centuries a sealed
book, and from whose truths when opened the darkness of ages did but
slowly disappear. "Equal;" not "free" only,--this latter word might
seem to be used with some license of speech,--but _equal_, in the
essential gifts and purposes of existence. Christianity by addressing
the common nature and unfolding the immortal destiny of mankind has
shown a broad ground, on which all may meet and lift up the chorus of
a united and acknowledged brotherhood. The framers of our Declaration
of Independence thought they were proclaiming a political axiom, when
they republished one of the great revelations of the Gospel, the full
meaning of which can be learned only throu