I.
The Nature of Liberty.
1. Liberty is not licence. There are two kinds of freedom: the false, where a man is free to do what he likes ; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought. The lawless man is a bond- slave whether it is primarily against his own inner life and health and growth that he sins, or against the society in which he lives, or against Almighty God, who is waiting to have mercy on him — whether it is the love of God, or the love of man, or the true unselfish love of self, that he disregards and casts aside in sloth or wilfulness or passion; in every case the ultimate, the characteristic, note of his sin is still the same : it is lawlessness : it is the abuse of will, thrusting away the task, declining from the effort, refusing the sacrifice in which lay the next step towards the end of life, the man's one raison d'Hre : it is the distortion of faculties, the wrenching aside of energy, the perversion of a trust from the purpose marked upon it, from the design which conscience seldom, if ever, wholly ceases to attest, to a morbid use, to a senseless squandering, a listless, wasteful, indolent neglect, a self-chosen and self-centred aim. Whether the sin be quiet or flagrant, brutal or refined, secret or flaunting, arrogant or faint- hearted, its deep distinctive quality, its badness and its power for havoc lie in this, that the man will not have law to reign over him; that he will do what he wills with that which is not in truth his own; that he is acting, or idling, in contempt of the law which conditions the great gift of life, and is involved in his tenure of it.
For instance, let us mark that dull rebellion of lawless thoughts ; the perverseness, the ever-deepening disorder of a mind that swerves from its true calling wilfully to loiter or to brood about the thoughts of sin, about thoughts of sensuality, or of jealousy, or of self-conceit. The high faculties of memory,
2 COR. III. 17 (>'j
reflection, fancy, observation, are dragged down from their great task : day by day the field for their lawful exercise is spread oat before them : all the wonder, the beauty, the mystery, the sadness, the dignity and wretchedness, the endless interests and endless opportunities of human life and of the scene which it is crossing — these are ever coming before the mind which God created to enter into them, to find its work and training and delight and growth amidst them. And yet, all the while, in the dismal lawlessness of sin, it stays to grovel among the hateful thoughts of mean, degrading vices ; or turns day after day to keep awake the memory of some sullen grudge, some fancied slight ; to tend the smoky flame of some dull, unreasonable hatred : or to dwell on its own poor achievements, its fancied excellences, the scraps of passing praise that have been given to it, the dignity that its self -consciousness is making laughable. Surely it is terrible to think that a man may so go on, and so grow old, continually stumbling farther and farther from the law of his own joy and health.
^ Liberty is the fullest opportunity for man to be and do the very best that is possible for him. I know of no definition of liberty, that oldest and dearest phrase of men, and sometimes the vaguest also, except that. It has been perverted, it has been distorted and mystified, but that is what it really means : the fullest opportunity for a man to do and be the very best that is in his personal nature to do and to be. It immediately follows that everything which is necessary for the full realization of a man's life, even though it seems to have the character of restraint for a moment, is really a part of the process of his enfranchisement, is the bringing forth of him to a fuller liberty.^
\ Liberty is but a means. Woe unto you and to your future, should you ever accustom yourselves to regard it as the end ! Your own individuality has its rights and duties, which may not be yielded up to any ; but woe unto you and to your future, should the respect you owe unto that which constitutes your individual life ever degenerate into the fatal crime of egotism. We need liberty, as much to fulfil a duty as to exercise a right ; we must retain it. But if you give to your political education a higher religious principle, liberty will become what it ought really to be — the ability to choose between various means of doing good ; if you enthrone it alone, as at once means and end, it will become ^ Phillips Brooks, Addresses, 82.
68 THE LIBERTY OF THE SPIRIT
what some jurisconsults, copying paganism, have defined it to be — the right to use and to abuse. It will lead society first to anarchy, afterwards to the despotism which you fear.^
Nought nobler is, than to be free;
The stars of heaven are free because In amplitude of liberty
Their joy is to obey the laws. From servitude to freedom's name