RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.-WM. GASTON.

I AM opposed, out and out, to any interference of the state with the opinions of its citizens, and more especially with their opinions on religious subjects. Law is the proper judge of action, and reward or punishment its proper sanction. Reason is the proper umpire of opinion, and argument and discussion its only fit advocates. To denounce opinions by law is as silly, and

on. Born of Faith-nurtured by Hope-invigorated by ty-looking for its rewards in a world beyond the graveof Heaven, heavenly. The evidence upon which it is ed, and the sanctions by which it is upheld, are addressed to the understanding and the purified affections. Even om whom cometh every pure and perfect gift, and to whom on is directed as its author, its end, and its exceedingly reward, imposes no coercion on His children. They e, or doubt, or reject, according to the impressions which stimony of revealed truth makes upon their minds. He His sun to shine alike on the believer and the unbeliever, His dews to fertilize equally the soil of the orthodox and eretic. No earthly gains or temporal privations are to nce their judgment here, and it is reserved until the last or the just Judge of all the earth to declare who have ally refused to examine or to credit the evidences which laid before them. But civil rulers thrust themselves in, ecome God's avengers. Under a pretended zeal for the of His house, and the propagation of His Revelation,

Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod;
Rejudge His justice—are the God of God;

faith by edicts, statutes, and constitutions; deal out larto accelerate conviction, and refute unbelief and heresy e unanswerable logic of pains and penalties. Let not -n be abused for this impious tyranny-religion has nothing with it. Nothing can be conceived more abhorrent from