years, excluding three thousand. It would be an
imperfect and a fallacious induction. But I hope that even this narrow
and disedifying section of history will aid you to see that the action
of Christ who is risen on mankind whom he redeemed fails not, but
increases;[41] that the wisdom of divine rule appears not in the
perfection but in the improvement of the world;[42] and that achieved
liberty is the one ethical result that rests on the converging and
combined conditions of advancing civilisation.[43] Then you will
understand what a famous philosopher said, that History is the true
demonstration of Religion.[44]

[Sidenote: MEANING OF LIBERTY]

But what do people mean who proclaim that liberty is the palm, and the
prize, and the crown, seeing that it is an idea of which there are two
hundred definitions, and that this wealth of interpretation has caused
more bloodshed than anything, except theology? Is it Democracy as in
France, or Federalism as in America, or the national independence
which bounds the Italian view, or the reign of the fittest, which is
the ideal of Germans?[45] I know not whether it will ever fall within
my sphere of duty to trace the slow progress of that idea through the
chequered scenes of our history, and to describe how subtle
speculations touching the nature of conscience promoted a nobler and
more spiritual conception of the liberty that protects it,[46] until
the guardian of rights developed into the guardian of duties which are
the cause of rights,[47] and that which had been prized as the
material safeguard for treasures of earth became sacred as security
for things that are divine. All that we require is a workday key to
history, and our present need can be supplied without pausing to
satisfy philosophers. Without inquiring how far Sarasa or Butler, Kant
or Vinet, is right as to the infallible voice of God in man, we may
easily agree in this, that where absolutism reigned, by irresistible
arms, concentrated possessions, auxiliary churches, and inhuman laws,
it reigns no more; that commerce having risen against land, labour
against wealth, the state against the forces dominant in society,[48]
the division of power against the state, the thought of individuals
against the practice of ages, neither authorities, nor minorities, nor
majorities can command implicit obedience; and, where there has been
long and arduous experience, a rampart of tried conviction and
accumulated knowledge,[49] whe