Democracy an& TReUglon.

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of the little colony Rhode Island not a foot ofhabitable earth where a Baptist could worshipaccording to his own conscience. John Smyth,who as the father of English baptism, was thefounder of the first Free Church in the Anglo-American world, declared an established confessionof truth impossible because there is no earthlytribunal to judge it.

But tolerance was more than a legal maxim.It was founded on a new conception of truth. Sincethe Fall mankind is individualised, uniformitybeing a sign of death. Or to use a metaphor : Thedivine light, as Fichte puts it, is broken in thehuman intermediary into divers rays, and thetotal Truth is a blending together of all these rays.No one has more finely expressed this profoundprinciple of Tolerance than the early Quakers. SoPenington says (Works, 3 ed. 1784,1444) : " Howsweet it is for the spiritual eye to see several sortsof believers every one learning their own lesson,performing their peculiar service. The groundfor love and unity is not that such a man does justas I do, but because I feel the same spirit and lifein him." For Penington, every truth is only theshadow of a higher truth. Remember also thefamous word of William Penn in his " Fruits ofSolitude " : " The Humble, Meek, Merciful, Just,Pious and Devout Souls are everywhere of oneReligion ; and when Death has taken off the Mask ,they will know one another, tho' the divers Liveriesthey wear here make them strangers."

From this source springs that thought of theeighteenth century's Enlightenment to which