Pent in, a Tyrant's solitary thrall:
'Tis his, who walks about in the open air,
One of a nation who, henceforth, must wear
Their fetters in their souls. For who can be,
Who, even the best, in such condition, free
From self-reproach, reproach which he must share
With human nature? Never be it ours

To see the sun how brightly it will shine
And know that noble feeling, manly powers,

Instead of gathering strength, must droop and pine,
And earth with all her pleasant fruits and flowers
Fade and participate in Man's decline."

But what is this bondage worse by far to bear? It is the bondage of the mind and heart in superstition; it is the absence of religious freedom; it is the iron age of intolerance, and the chaining of the soul in a spiritual despotism more rigid and terrible than that of nature in the glaciers. This is worse to bear. There never can be freedom in Switzerland, till there is freedom to worship God. There never can be freedom, till there is the religion of voluntary faith, instead of a despotic form, into which you are pressed and held fast by penal law. It is a glorious word, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is LIBERTY; and now a spiritual Tell is needed in Switzerland, as in Rome, to proclaim this to his countrymen, to tell them in what that liberty consists, and to show them that an infidel mob, and a church with penal persecuting maxims, are alike opposed to it and deadly, whether under a monarchy, a despotism or a republic.

They have in Switzerland Romish Republics, but is republicanism a cure for intolerance? Will it unloose the fettered souls of the people? No more than the mountain winds and the summer months unbind the glaciers. In almost every Romish Republican state in Switzerland the profession of Protestantism is followed by the loss of the rights of citizenship, as well as incapacity to fill any public office in the State. I speak the language of a Swiss citizen himself, who reminds me of the example of his own Christian friend, M. Pfyffer, formerly a Professor of history in the College at Lucerne, but who, on becoming a Protestant, lost both his place of professor and his rights as a citizen. He went to live at Lausanne, a voluntary exile from a country,

where he would inevitably be persecuted. Nevertheless, they have at Lucerne the most republican institution, they have universal suffrage, but in addition to this, they have Romanism and the Jesuits. Give to these agents the requisite majority of votes and supremacy of power, and the freaks of persecution may be even more startling and ferocious in a republic than a monarchy. Universal suffrage, once fired by the spirit of intolerance, may be worse than State edicts on a people, with whom to hear is to obey. They wear their fetters in their souls, who wear them as a part of the mob that forged them. Many masters are more intolerable than one.

Every part of earth, every heritage of intelligent freemen, that has been visited with the fires of religious persecution, and every spot on earth that has not, ought to dread all approximation to the union of Church and State; for power converts even devotion into superstition and fanaticism, and they that have got free themselves run to fasten their cast off fetters upon others. If the Church does not persecute through the State, the State will oppress the Church, will make it a political tool, or nothing. Read the commentary in the Canton de Vaud, where a democratic State, not Roman Catholic, enacts the persecuting antics of the English Church and State under Queen Elizabeth, while the people are permitted by the State to mob the assemblies of voluntary Christians! Where the Church relies on the State for support, it is an abject creature, fawning, and ready to be persecuted; where it is a part of the State by Establishment, and holds the legislative and executive power, it is a ferocious creatnre, ready to persecute; it is the cat or the tiger, as circumstances require; it will catch mice for the State, and sleep by the fire-side, or it will abide in jungles and play the Oriental Despot.

This is not the true Church of Christ, but the Church corrupted, for his kingdom is not of this world. When the powers of this world, instead of being sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, and so put in subjection to his authority, are committed to the Church and subjected to the use of the Church under her authority, that is not the advancement of Christ's kingdom, nor is that the way in which Christ's kingdom can advance; for Christ's

kingdom is spiritual, in the hearts of men, and not in the government of empires, which government, just so far as it is committed to the Church, is but the act and voice of the Tempter, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

All error is intolerant; but even the Truth, if put into form without love, will roast men alive with no more remorse than error itself. So it is only the truth in love, that can make men free. Put into form, and fought for as form, without love, it may make men as bitter, as violent, as malignant, as intolerant, as any despotism of hierarchical error. Because it becomes a selfish thing, a proud thing, a thing of meum and tuum, a thing of conquest, a possession of selfishness and pride.

All the fighting for truth done without love, is not for God, but for self and Satan. If you really love the truth, you will love it under other forms besides your own; you will not fight to impose your form on others. But if you belong to a form without love, and set out to extend the truth in your form, you inevitably become intolerant, and if you had the power, you would be a fierce persecutor. There is no safety for the world against your intolerance, but in your weakness.

We want protection for our religious convictions, not only against intolerance imposing an established form, not only against the Church without love, the Church as an Inquisition, the Church as a Despotism, but also against the intolerance of the people, against the caprices of popular liberty associated with power. We want a religious liberty above and separate from a political liberty, and which can no more be invaded by it, than a man's dwelling-house can be torn down with impunity, or a church or a city fired by a mob. This is impossible, when the Church is dependent on the State. The State will, if it pleases, direct the Church what to teach, and how to teach it, and if she refuses, will punish, will persecute. The State may be the purest of republics, and yet may indulge in the most atrocious despotism in matters of religion. Therefore, a constitutional State must have no power to meddle with religion at all, except to protect its quiet worship. The whole world must inevitably come to this conclusion, and then the whole world will be still. Then love will reign, and truth will burn brightly. The State

itself will more readily become religious, when it is deprived of all power to modify and govern religion.

How impressively are these truths illustrated by what is now going on in Germany and Switzerland! God in his providence is showing us that neither Evangelical Protestantism, nor Romanism, nor Rationalism, whether under a republic or a despotism, can be entrusted with State power. The State cannot be entrusted with power over the Church; for, some way or other, it will act the tyrant. The Church cannot be entrusted with power over the State, or with the use of the State to enforce her rubrics or her teachings; for the Church also, sooner or later, acts the tyrant, when tempted to it. The temptation comes under the guise of an angel, under the plausible pretence of uniformity in worship, and the advancing of the Redeemer's kingdom. So much the more dangerous it is, so much the more earnestly and carefully to be repelled. Religion is a voluntary thing, both in form and doctrine. Let every State and every Church respect it as such, and cease from enforcing it, and leave to Christianity The Word of God ONLY

The Grace of Christ ONLY

The Work of the Spirit ONLY,

and then intolerance and strife will cease, truth and love will prevail, error will die out of existence, and throughout all nations the kingdom of Christ will come.

CHAPTER XXX.

Lake of Uri and town of Lucerne.

FROM Altorf a short walk brings you to Fluellen, the low unhealthy part of the Reuss Valley, on the celebrated Lake of Lucerne. You embark, morning or evening, in the steamer for the town of Lucerne at the other end, to enjoy a sail amidst the almost unequalled scenery and unrivalled historical associations, by which it is surrounded. You embark where Gessler embarked, with Tell in chains, you pass the table rock, where Tell leaped on shore from the tempest and the tyrant, and sprang lightly up the mountains; also the little chapel erected in the year 1380 by the men of Uri to his memory and the memory of his escape, thirty-one years after his death, while one hundred and fourteen individuals were still living, who had known the hero personally; you pass the sacred field of Grutli, where the midnight oath was taken by the patriots. The scenery is in keeping with the associations, the associations with the scenery. Assuredly the Lake is one of the sublimest in the world; it is useless attempting to describe it, or the mountains that rise in such amazing grandeur out of it, or the bays that in such exquisite beauty allure you to explore its winding recesses.

One of the precipitous Alps whose foundations it conceals, shows, high up in the air, a white sear where a fragment of rock 1200 feet wide broke from the mountain and fell into the Lake in the year 1801, raising such a wave in its fall, that at the distance of a mile a hamlet was overwhelmed and five houses destroyed by it, with the loss of a number of lives. The size of this fragment, though the scar in the mountain looks so inconsiderable, may serve to direct the traveller's measurement of those huge avalanches, which at the distance of leagues look so enormous on the Jungfrau, and which on other mountains have buried whole villages and swept whole forests in their way.