times the law of evolution is so misinterpreted as to invalidate the laws of ethics, whenever the "survival of the fittest" is supposed to mean the survival of the strongest, when supposed necessity or alleged profit is made the excuse for depriving another man or another nation of its liberty, then the spirit of Roger Williams should be summoned from the vasty deep, that it may speak in trumpet tones to recall us to ourselves. This apostle of liberty denied two hundred and fifty years ago that "Christian kings, so called, are invested with a right by virtue of their Christianity to take and give away the lands and countries of other men." He was persistently against every interference with self-government, home rule, and liberty for all sorts and conditions of men. He preferred Democracy, with all its perils, to the assumption of Divine Right, with all its hateful splendor. We need also to exalt the principles of Roger Williams whenever in our day the claims of the individual are in danger of being ignored. A century ago the word "independence" was a word to conjure with. Now it awakens little enthusiasm: interdependence is the great truth in which men are now interested; and society is frequently treated as an organism, in whose mighty development the individual is over shadowed and forgotten. The brotherhood of man, the amelioration of humanity, the federation of the world, the progress of the species, are phrases on all our lips, and concepts which catch and hold the public mind. We live in the day of combination and consolidation, when isolation is defeat, and division is frequently death. The ends of the world are growing together, and the progress of the race is accelerated to an amazing degree. But we must remember that the value of the brotherhood of man depends on the individuals who make up the brotherhood. The progress of the species is impossible apart from the progress of the units composing the species; the success of federation depends on having real men to federate; and the advance of humanity is a dream, apart from the advance of separate individual men and women. The millennium will not come by paper programmes or acts of Congress. It will come by the millennial spirit of freedom and loyalty, by the love of liberty and faith in law arising in the heart of one man, and then communicating themselves to millions of others, as echoes that grow forever and forever. Let us learn also to tolerate the man of vision, even if he be clothed in camel's hair, and insist on eating wild honey. They that live delicately in kings' houses may be far more congenial companions at modern social functions; but the men whose voices ring out among the crags of the wilderness are, after all, the true forerunners of the Messiah. "Behold, this dreamer cometh," said Joseph's brethren scornfully; but, until the man of the dream does come, the man with a hoe, the man with a purse, and the man with a pen sit helpless and useless. The men who disturb the smooth surface of life are often divinely sent. Some bless the world by aiding in its harmonious development. They quietly co-operate with the general tendency of society, and help it onward. Other men help the world by challenging social custom, by reopening questions the world has thought of as settled, and by summoning their day and generation to open their minds to new light. For these men also let us have a welcome. If we kill the prophets to-day, we shall sadly and penitently build their tombs to-morrow. Uncertainty is always the mother of intolerance. The men who are sure of their own convictions can always afford to listen to the man whose convictions are different. As James Russell Lowell says, "The universe of God is fire-proof, and it is quite safe to strike a match." Roger Williams did strike a few matches in Providence Planta tions two and a half centuries ago, and the conflagration which threatened to consume Massachusetts has turned out only to be the lighting of a flame now cherished on all the hearthstones of the republic. Therefore we do well, from time to time, to preserve in speech and song and legal record, and in memorials of marble and bronze, the name and fame of the founder of Rhode Island; for in the wise and balanced words of John Fiske, "He was the first to conceive thoroughly, and carry out consistently, in the face of strong opposition, a theory of religious liberty broad enough to win assent and approval from advanced thinkers of the present day." |