If we are awake to the dangers surrounding us, we may guard against them; but if we are deceived, we are indeed lost. The present age is one in which so much of what purports to be wisdom is forced upon the people, that they are given scarcely time to consider its utility. Nor does this seem to be the result of a demand; but, instead, shows a systematic attempt to limit public opinion to the ideas and interests of a certain few, who hold the same relation to society and morality as the political despot holds to his subjects.
It is argued, that the more we trust our most vital interests to those who claim to devote their exclusive attention to them, the better off we are, for time and eternity. This theory would not serve as a basis for political economy, nor would it insure the business-man success. It is patent to every candid thinker, that our interests in Truth are identical; then, while attending to our own real interests, we are doing the best we can for the interest of others, and vice versa. The action of all who have imbibed the spirit of liberty from oppression, has been aroused by an understanding of this principle of identical interests which must forever be perpetuated. The interest of each in Truth, to make no more of any idea or doctrine than its demonstration upholds, prevents the chance for personal conflict, which always exists under other conditions.
The early Puritans, voyaging from a land of oppression, showed a disposition to flee before tyranny; but our forefathers, in founding an independent republic, did it with the spirit of liberty, yet the disposition for oppression is still rife, and exercises its tyranny. From political servitude, man is plunged into a still deeper gulf of social and moral servitude. But political servitude is as nothing, compared to the servitude to the belief in material law, which is acknowledged in the pulpit, (where the sanctity of Truth should dwell), incorporated into public opinion in our schools, seminaries, and colleges, practised by graduates of these, institutions, and its sentences executed by blind adherents.
