s so in the struggle to separate Church
and State. It is so in the effort to sustain the belief in the "divine
right of kings." The Church fought individual liberty and representative
government, and she still contests the questions of individual
conscience and universal equality and independence.*

* See reports of the last General Conference of the
Methodist Church held in Philadelphia, where, during a
heated debate, one member said that he was in favor of using
common-sense and the principle of justice in deciding
questions of right and wrong and of liberty of conscience;
whereupon a large majority voted him a dangerous man, and
decided that common-sense and justice had nothing to do with
religion. One member naively remarked that the whole career
and life of a good preacher fully disproved that any such
heretical doctrines obtained in the Church as that the use
of common-sense was admissible; and since the majority voted
with him it does not seem to be my place to question that
fact.

In these matters the Church has invariably been on the side that
ultimately had to go to the wall, and she has become a party to the
progress only after the principle has become an established fact.

Now it is the efforts of Science and Law towards the elevation of man
and the bettering of his condition in this world--the procuring for him
of greater personal advantages, dignity, and liberty--that have marked
the progress of civilization.

The climate and soil decided man's occupation; his occupation determined
what his higher needs should be; and his higher needs and the gained
results of his occupations enabled him to strive for the bettering of
his condition and surroundings. The man who lived in a climate favorable
to mental and physical activity, and in a country with a rich and
varied soil, was enabled to accomplish his ends as his less fortunate
brother-lacking such support and stimulus and motive--has been unable to
do.

If such a thing had been possible, thirty years ago, as that all
knowledge of our religion had been utterly wiped out of America, and
a thorough knowledge of Buddhism or Mohammedanism instilled into every
Yankee brain in its stead, the Yankee brain would have simply adjusted
its religion to its surroundings and not its surroundings to its
religion; and America would have gone right on in the front rank of
liberty and toleration and progress