does not inflict injury
on others or involve a breach of public order. This limitation appears
to carry with it a certain decency and restraint in expression which
avoids unnecessary insult to the feelings of others; and I think this
implication must be allowed, though it makes some room for strained and
unfair applications. Externally, again, we must note that the demand for
religious liberty soon goes beyond mere toleration. Religious liberty is
incomplete as long as any belief is penalized, as, for example, by
carrying with it exclusion from office or from educational advantages.
On this side, again, full liberty implies full equality. Turning to the
internal side, the spirit of religious liberty rests on the conception
that a man's religion ranks with his own innermost thought and feelings.
It is the most concrete expression of his personal attitude to life, to
his kind, to the world, to his own origin and destiny. There is no real
religion that is not thus drenched in personality; and the more religion
is recognized for spiritual the starker the contradiction is felt to be
that any one should seek to impose a religion on another. Properly
regarded, the attempt is not wicked, but impossible. Yet those sin most
against true religion who try to convert men from the outside by
mechanical means. They have the lie in the soul, being most ignorant of
the nature of that for which they feel most deeply.

Yet here again we stumble on difficulties. Religion is personal. Yet is
not religion also eminently social? What is more vital to the social
order than its beliefs? If we send a man to gaol for stealing trash,
what shall we do to him whom, in our conscience and on our honour, we
believe to be corrupting the hearts of mankind, and perhaps leading them
to eternal perdition? Again, what in the name of liberty are we to do to
men whose preaching, if followed out in act, would bring back the rack
and the stake? Once more there is a difficulty of delimitation which
will have to be fully sifted. I will only remark here that our practice
has arrived at a solution which, upon the whole, appears to have worked
well hitherto, and which has its roots in principle. It is open to a man
to preach the principles of Torquemada or the religion of Mahomet. It is
not open to men to practise such of their precepts as would violate the
rights of others or cause a breach of the peace. Expression is free, and
worship is free as far as it is the exp