ed most from the Bible
and spoken most gratefully of its message. When we think of sending
the Bible to barbarism, with the hope of creating in its stead
civilization, we can look into the face of John Selden, one of the
most illustrious of English lawyers, when he says: "I have surveyed
most of the learning that is among the sons of men, yet at this moment
I can recall nothing in them on which to rest my soul, save one from
the sacred Scriptures, which rises much on my mind. It is this: 'The
grace of God, which bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men,
teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live
soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for
that blest hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our
Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem
us unto himself, a peculiar people zealous of good works.'" Liberal
religion must include Selden. We will not be deterred from giving the
Bible to heathenism of any kind when we remember that Sir William
Jones has left these words: "The Scriptures contain more true
sublimity, more exquisite beauty, and finer strains of poetry and
eloquence than could be collected from all other books that were ever
composed in any age or in any idiom." Liberal religion must be as
broad as Sir William Jones.

This is a very needy world, and many are the institutions of evil that
need to be changed for institutions of goodness. If we are to believe
the eloquence of hopeless unbelief, we ourselves will only be the
slaves of a fatalism which says that man is but a result of forces;
that what we call crime is but a part of the necessary course of
things, and that there is no such thing as moral responsibility. This
makes all reform or efforts at staying the tide of evil useless.
Oftentimes the heart of the man who has ceased to read his Bible gets
the victory over this dreadful philosophy, and it is not remarkable
that the skeptic becomes the exponent of freedom, charging like a host
of war upon all institutions of slavery. Liberal theology puts its one
hand on the dogmatist who tells him to accept literal infallibility,
and its other on the sincere lover of men who has lost his Bible
entirely. And liberalism says: It is in just such moments that we
trust our Bible the most, and we remember that William Wilberforce,
who lifted the chains from the bondmen, has said: "I never knew
happiness until I found Christ as a Savi