statute, couched in noble language, is as follows-it is a part of the sacred writings of the New World:

We, the General Assembly of Virginia, do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place of ministry, whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or effect their civil capacities.

Read in the setting of that age, those were memorable words, and their author is entitled to the perpetual and reverent regard of his countrymen. Yet it is a curious fact that while he did not differ widely in his religious views from Franklin, Adams, and even Washington, it was Jefferson who was singled out for the most savage and unreasonable attacks. He was branded as a skeptic, an infidel, an atheist-words which had terrifying meanings in those days-all because he held that every man should have the right to hold and advocate such religious faith as seemed to him true and right and good. Even a casual reader of the newspapers and pamphlets of the period knows how viciously Jefferson was maligned and his own religious faith misrepresented. Of course, his political enemies made full use of these fulminations, which continued throughout his lifetime and echoed long after his death.

The fact is that Jefferson was brought up in the church, a vestryman in its service, and a fairly regular attendant upon its offices. He planned at least one church edifice, and gave liberally to the building of others, as well as to the support of public worship. He was especially liberal to Bible societies, being himself more familiar with the Bible than any other public man of his time, not even excepting Franklin, who was a close student of it. His life was singularly pure; he was as chaste as he was charming-no one ever heard him utter an oath-and so magnanimous was his spirit that he placed a marble bust of Hamilton, his political antagonist, in the hall of Monticello. Such was the man whom bigots denounced as an enemy of God and man, because, as he confessed: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

In his own religious faith Jefferson was a "liberal," whose thinking was colored by the rationalistic philosophy of the eighteenth century; but he held his faith in a liberal spirit, with due regard for the faith of others. And it is the spirit that matters. A man may hold a conservative faith in a liberal spirit and a liberal faith in an illiberal spirit. Jefferson was a liberal in spirit and in faith. The New Testament was his favorite book. The teachings of Jesus fascinated him. During his first term in the White House he found time to make a syllabus of the doctrines of Jesus compared with the moral codes of other religions, in which he made out a strong case for the superiority of the ethics of Christ. In a letter to Thompson in 1816 he tells what he had been doing:

I have made a wee little book which I call "The Philosophy of Jesus." It is a paradigm of His doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on pages of a blank book in a certain order of time and subject. A more beautiful and precious morsel of ethics I have never seen. It is a document in proof that I am a real Christian; that is, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the platonists who call me an infidel and themselves

Christians, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said or saw.

Often in his letters he speaks of his religious attitude, and at times with pungent epigrams worthy of a long pondering, as when he said, "Had there never been a commentator there never would have been an infidel." To Benjamin Rush he wrote: "I am a Christian in the only sense Jesus wished anyone to be, sincerely attached to his precepts"; and what he professed he practiced in his life-never more so than when he achieved for his country its precious heritage of freedom of faith. If character is Christianity, surely, if ever of anyone, we may say that Jefferson was a Christian. One hundred years ago he died, murmuring as he sank into the great sleep the old, beautiful Bible prayer: "Now, lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace." So passed a great patriot-caught up from the Little Mountain in a chariot of sunset fire.

To Jefferson more than to any other one individual we owe the religious democracy of America, and it behooves us to guard it as a thing sacred and not to be violated. To-day, as in all the past, eternal vigilance is needed to keep what has cost so much. Efforts are always afoot-sincere and high minded, but mistaken-seeking to use the state to enforce either the dogmas of the church or its moral precepts. Already we have gone further in that direction than it is wise or safe to go, putting in jeopardy the rights of the minority as well as the rightful influence and work of the church. Ardent minds, impatient of moral suasion, if they have not actually lost faith in it, cross a clear line never to be erased and invade our most sacred heritage-a thing to be watched and rebuked, no matter under what pious pretext it is done.

Also, there is need to remember that mere toleration is not enough; it may mean only that we agree to allow others to exist until they come to their senses-that is, until they come to our way of thinking. The rancorous and vindictive intolerance of the last few years has been appalling, marring alike the comity of faith and the decorum of the religious life. Often of late one has recalled the saying of Penn that men who fight about religion have no religion to fight about, since they do in the name of religion what religion itself forbids. What we need is more insight, more understanding a mirror in the mind to enable us to see other points of view. Toleration is not enough; we must cultivate appreciation, fellowship, cooperation, if freedom of faith is to bear its finest fruits.

III. From the democracy of religion, for which we are indebted to Jefferson, we must go forward and achieve the religion of democracy that is, the religion which traces and trusts the will of God revealed in the growing, unfolding life of the people. The affirmations that "all men are created equal" and that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed " have profound spiritual implications. Not yet have we fathomed the religious meaning of our fundamental American ideas and ideals. The theology of America has yet to be written, a hint and a prophecy of which Elisha Mulford gave us when he called his book of theology The Republic God, in which he sought to open the gates of heaven a little wider than they had ever been before.

What is democracy? More than a phrase, more than a philosophy, more than a political system; it is something pungent and poignant of the people; a faith which finds its fulfillment in inclusiveness; a vision of the worth of every human soul which makes the worth of life; a fellowship which, having its roots in the love of God, reveals itself in love of man. It may be summed up in two propositions; first, that the things common to all men are far more important than the things peculiar to any man or class; and, second, that the most vitally important things must be intrusted to the collective experience and sagacity of mankind. So defined, it is close akin to the religion whose gospel was the "good news of great joy which the common people heard so gladly on the hillsides of Gallilee, when the Son of Man lodged with the fishermen by the sea.

Put otherwise, it is the faith that society can safely be founded on the self-directing power of personality, and that it is only on this foundation that a true community can be built. Fortunately our fathers kept their theology and their politics apart, seemingly unaware of the conflict between them. For, truly, if the dogma of total depravity is true, a government of the people, by the people, for the people, is the ultimate disaster. Whatever the fathers may have heard in their pulpits, they founded a Nation upon the essential nobility of human nature. That is, they reversed the theological teaching of ages and risked the fate of a republic upon the inherent divinity of man; and our history thus far down the ways of time has justified their faith. Such an idea, if thought through, means an appeal to experience to the living and continuing revelation of God-as the basis of religious faith no less than of political truth.

Always, by the creative logic of experience, a new faith in man implies and involves a new vision of God. It was natural for men who bowed when the chariot of Caesar swept by to think of God as an infinite emperor, ruling the world with an arbitrary and irresponsible almightiness. But for men who live in a republic such a conception is a caricature, if not a blasphemy. By the same token, we worship in the presence of an eternal father, who is always and everywhere accessible to the humblest man. The logic of the American idea leads to faith in a divine life universal, impartial, all encompassing, and everlasting. If the faith of the religion of democracy is the fatherhood of God, its service is the brotherhood of man. The two belong together, one and inseparable, one the basis the other the building-the realization of God by the practice of brotherhood.

Such is the spiritual meaning of the American ideal, however far we may fall below it, defaming it by exclusiveness or defiling it by our unworthiness. To that ideal we are pledged by the very genius of our history, by the revelation of God in our national experience, and we fulfill it in the measure that we weld this vast medley of peoples into a beloved community-many races without rancor, many faiths without feud. Hitherto, we must admit, the peoples that have been notably creative in religious thought have been infertile in democratic ideas, and democracies have been deficient in spiritual creativeness. What the future of America will reveal remains to be disclosed, and its history will be its judgment, as Schiller said all history is.

IV. What of the present? Bryce, in his survey of a century and a half of modern democracy, finds a sad deficit between what the theory of democracy requires and what the practice of it reveals— "the failure of citizens to reach the needed standard of civic excellence." Back of this civic failure lies a moral failure, due to the fact that our democracy, so far at least, has been imperfectly religious. There is, indeed, a spiritual schism at the heart of it. Democracy, as has been said, rests upon the self-directing power of personality, but personality can not be realized in its fullness apart from a divine self in whom it finds inspiration and fulfilment. Agnosticism may be a better basis of democracy than total depravity, but it is utterly inadequate.

With uncanny insight the picturesque dictator of Italy said recently "The democratic-liberal state, weak, and agnostic is no more and there is enough truth in this thrust to make it uncomfortable. Our democracy has been too rationalistic, too utilitarian, too agnostic, and if we except Walt Whitman walking down dreamy democratic vistas, almost entirely nonmystical. This was true, in some measure of Jefferson himself, for all his vital spirituality. It is a curious fact, worthy of long meditation, that so many liberal political thinkers, from Mill to Morley, have been agnostic in their religious attitude, and therein lies a fatal weakness. Democracy lives at the foot of those hills to which religion bids men lift up their eyes for strength, but if their vision is dim, blurred, and uncertain, they will fail of that inspiration by which alone we mortals have understanding. An atheistic democracy is a terror and a calamity-its shadow lies dark over Russia, a menace to mankind.

As Lincoln said, our history has been a constant fight for the faith of democracy, and to-day it is a fiercer fight against sophistries and cynicisms of which he never dreamed. The "third empire" of Ibsen, the "superman" of Nietzsche, the "survival of the fittest," which means the fiercest and the most faithless-all are so many subtle forms of vanity by which the basic faith of democracy is denied and defamed. Against all of them we must fight the good fight, in the name of the worth of man and his right to be free-his duty to rule himself and to serve his fellows. But if democracy is to realize its ideal it must be under the inspiration and consecration of profound and creative vision of God, the Father of men, everywhere present, in whom our fleeting life has enduring worth and its ideal sanctions are secure. Church and state must be kept separate, but religion is the cement of society and the glory of the life of man.

To the future Jefferson looked forward with serenity, having an almost mystical faith in the efficacy of education. From Paris he wrote to George Wythe in 1786: "Preach, my dear sir, a crusade against ignorance, establish and improve the law for educating the people"; and in proof of his own faith he founded the University of Virginia-a free university with no religious tests for professors or pupils to be a home of culture and a friend of "the great freedoms of the mind," in obedience to its motto selected by its founder from the words of Jesus: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Students of theology were invited to enjoy the lectures and the library. As Jefferson said: "By bringing the

sects together and mixing them with the mass of other students we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality." Manifestly his hope lay in salvation by education-the attic light of learning blending with the altar fire of faith.

Here lies our hope of the future, whose unknown days and issues will be swayed and solved by three forces working together-the spirit of science, the democratic principle, and the light and power and sanctity of an emancipated spiritual evangel. With these forces toiling as friends, we can not fail. Without their friendship we can not win. If we are true-hearted and high-minded, if we seek and obey the truth, God, even the God of our fathers, will answer our aspiration and His inspiration, making democracy a fellowship of liberty, equity, and beauty, science a skillful, ministrant love, and religion His hallowing presence.

For men are homesick in their homes,

And strangers under the sun,

And they lay their heads in a foreign land,
Whenever the day is done.

ADDRESS BY MRS. MURRAY BOOCOCK

At Monticello, July 3, 1926

It is my distinguished pleasure to welcome to the heights of Monticello you pilgrims from far and from near, representing the various chapters in the 48 States of America of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

We, the mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters, descendants of those who braved a wilderness and savage tribes so that we to-day might abide in a happier land than the one they fled from and in peace and plenty, welcome you to Virginia, the Mother State, that in all the years has loyally held to those ideals our forebears lived and labored for. We welcome you to Monticello where, 150 years ago, a young man lived, and here he battled for those higher things of the spirit that have brought down to this day the possibilities of beauty, of education, and of spirituality that each of us here can claim and make use of.

Jefferson's home, Monticello, was ever open to kinsfolk and friends; and so to-day we emulate his hospitality in a small degree, opening wide the doors of Monticello, sharing with you all of all that is best in it of tree and flower, of bird song and mountain and its hillside beauties; the smile of a child, and the handclasp of its men and women and its peace and cheer; all these we offer you todav.

May the memories of this July 3 be among the very happiest ones that life gives you and the "Little Mountain" ever be a Mecca that will cause your hearts to turn your steps again this way, where the friends that welcome you to-day will prove to be the friends of the

morrow.

I bring you greetings from our three chapters of Albemarle County, and may there not be one wish of yours ungranted while you are in our midst.