vantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis; and that whatever changes shall prove necessary to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and promptly made.

THE THIRTEEN PRINCIPLES.

PLATFORM OF THE NATIONAL LIBERAL LEAGUE.

1. The Constitution of the United States is built on the principle that the State can be, and ought to be, totally independent of the Church; in other words, that the natural reason and conscience of mankind are a sufficient guarantee of a happy, well-ordered, and virtuous civil community, and that free popular government must prove a failure if the Church is suffered to control legislation.

2. The religious rights and liberties of all citizens without exception, under the Constitution, are absolutely equal.

3. These equal religious rights and liberties include the right of every citizen to enjoy, on the one hand, the unrestricted exercise of his own religious opinions, so long as they lead him to no infringement of the equal rights of others; and not to be compelled, on the other hand, by taxation or otherwise, to support any religious opinions which are not his own.

4. These equal religious rights and liberties do not depend in the slightest degree upon conformity to the opinions of the majority, but are possessed to their fullest extent by those who differ from the majority fundamentally and totally.

5. Christians possess under the Constitution no religious rights or liberties which are not equally shared by Jews, Buddhists, Confucians, Spiritualists, Materialists, Rationalists, Freethinkers, Skeptics, Infidels, Atheists, Pantheists, and all other classes of citizens who disbelieve in the Christian religion.

6. Public or national morality requires all laws and acts of the government to be in strict accordance with this ab

solute equality of all citizens with respect to religious rights and liberties.

7. Any infringement by the government of this absolute equality of religious rights and liberties is an act of national immorality, a national crime committed against that natural "justice" which, as the Constitution declares, the government was founded to "establish."

8. Those who labor to make the laws protect more faithfully the equal religious rights and liberties of all the citizens are not the "enemies of morality," but moral reformers in the true sense of the word, and act in the evident interest of public righteousness and peace.

9. Those who labor to gain or to retain for one class of religious believers any legal privilege, advantage, or immunity which is not equally enjoyed by the community at large are really "enemies of morality," unite Church and State in proportion to their success, and, no matter how ignorantly or innocently, are doing their utmost to destroy the Constitution and undermine this free government.

10. Impartial protection of all citizens in their equal religious rights and liberties, by encouraging the free movement of mind, promotes the establishment of the truth re specting religion; while violation of these rights, by checking the free movement of mind, postpones the triumph of truth over error, and of right over wrong.

11. No religion can be true whose continued existence depends on continued State aid. If the Church has the truth, it does not need the unjust favoritism of the State; if it has not the truth, the iniquity of such favoritism is magnified tenfold.

12. No religion can be favorable to morality whose continued existence depends on continued injustice. If the Church teaches good morals, of which justice is a fundamental law, it will gain in public respect by practicing the morals it teaches, and voluntarily offering to forego its unjust legal advantages; if it does not teach good morals, then the claim to these unjust advantages on the score of its good moral influence becomes as wicked as it is weak.

13. Whether true or false, whether a fountain of good moral influences or of bad, no particular religion and no

particular church has the least claim in justice upon the State for any favor, any privilege, any immunity. The Constitution is no respecter of persons and no respecter of churches; its sole office is to establish civil society on the principles of right reason and impartial justice; and any State aid rendered to the Church, being a compulsion of the whole people to support the Church, wrongs every citizens who protests against such compulsion, violates impartial justice, sets at naught the first principles of morality, and subverts the Constitution by undermining the fundamental idea on which it is built.

CLEAR THE WAY.

Men of thought! be up and strring
Night and day;

Sow the seed, withdraw the curtain,
Clear the way!

Men of action, aid and cheer them
As ye may!

There's a fount about to stream,
There's a light about to beam,
There's a warmth about to glow,
There's a flower about to blow;
There's a midnight blackness changing
Into grey!

Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way!

Once the welcome light has broken,
Who shall say

What the unimagined glories
Of the day?

What the evil that shall perish
In its ray?

Aid the dawning, tongue and pen;
Aid it, hopes of honest men;

Aid it, paper, aid it typo,

Aid it, for the bour is ripe:

And our earnest must not slaken
Into play,

Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way.

Lo! a cloud's about to vanish
From the day;

And a brazen wrong to crumble
Into clay.

Lo! the Right's about to conquer,
Clear the way!

With the Right shall many more
Enter smiling at the door;
With the giant Wrong shall fall

Many others great and small,
That for ages long have held us

For their prey.

Men of thought and men of action,

Clear the way!

Charles Mackay.

Invocations.

It is not to be supposed that invocations or prayers can possibly effect a change upon any mysterious, unknown being, above or outside of the Universe. Nor upon the Universe itself. But they may have a salutary influence upon the person who utters them sincerely and upon the audience who listens to them.

They are calculated to produce a harmonious, reverential feeling and to induce a united, emotional spirit upon those in attendance. Many persons are in favor of them. For this reason a few forms are given. Of course they easily can be omitted when not desirable. D. M. B.

FORM 1.

O, thou mighty and mysterious Spirit of Nature, whose bright and benignant influence falls like a benediction upon our hearts through the ever-changing glories of thy genial seasons, thy setting suns and dawning days, thy jeweled nights, and winds and waves; we, thy children, have here gathered to worship and adore thee by singing our little hymns of praise and taking another step nearer to thee— another step farther away from our own blindness and prejudice and passion, and one nearer unto thy light and wisdom and benevolence. And as each day thou shalt bestow thy blessing upon us, may we learn

to understand and properly appreciate them. O thou Infinite Life of all Life, we are glad that we live; with all the darkness and disappointments that beset our way, still we are glad, for thou hast taught us to catch the sunbeams, to illume the secret chamber of our being with them, and make joyous the almost desolate places of mortal life. And we, thy children, trust thee for continued life, and that thou wilt vouchsafe unto us what we need, and wilt, at all times, continue to be an ever present blessing to our hearts. Be there those here who are sorrowing and sad; lift thou for them the drapery of darkness and let thy sunlight reach their souls. Be there here those who are sick and physically afflicted, impart to them of thy genial, health-giving influences, and cause them to rejoice in greater fullness of thy gladsome gifts. Even as the sweet sunshine of to-day has followed like a blessing the shadows of yesterday, so let the cheering rays of thy presence and thy power come to every weary soul, saying, “I am here, I am with you, the Infinite Source, and Nurse, and Mother of all." May we derive from thee the necessary strength and power to be ministers of mercy and love and health to each other, and act as thy servants in soothing the sufferings of our afflicted fellows. We realize our wants and weaknesses and that we are but as little children picking up pebbles along the boundless beach of being; may we submit without tears to see them washed into the ocean of forgetfulness. Enable us to comprehend the necessary justice of thy wondrous and irrevocable laws, and grant us strength to submit ourselves to them as creatures of the inevitable. May we as wise