se
them with a pure heart.

I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in
the plain and obvious meaning of its passages, since I cannot
persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and
conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in
such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers
can discover it.

I believe that the experiments and subtleties of human wisdom
are more likely to obscure than to enlighten the revealed will
of God, and that he is the most accomplished Christian scholar
who has been educated at the feet of Jesus and in the College
of Fishermen.

I believe that all true religion consists in the heart and the
affections, and that therefore all creeds and confessions are
fallible and uncertain evidences of Evangelical piety.

These views he held at twenty-five, and in the main retained them in his
later years, as is shown by his remarks before the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts on the occasion of the death of his intimate associate,
Jeremiah Mason, of which the following is an extract:--

But, sir, political eminence and professional fame fade away
and die with all things earthly. Nothing of character is really
permanent but virtue and personal worth. These remain. Whatever
of excellence is wrought into the soul itself belongs to both
worlds. Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this
life: it points to another world. Political or professional
reputation cannot last forever, but a conscience void of
offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity.
Religion, therefore, is a necessary and indispensable element
in any great human character; there is no living without it.
Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and
holds him to His throne. If that tie be all sundered, all
broken, he floats away,--a worthless atom in the universe; its
proper attraction all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole
future nothing but darkness, desolation, and death. A man with
no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe
in such terse but terrific language, "Without God in the
world." Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the
circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his
happiness, and away, far, far away, from the purposes of his