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Show Liberty and lirotberbot-n. Of liberty there are two kinds the false where man is free to do as ha likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought to do the will of his Father. And to do that he mu.it be free, not merely outwardly and politically, politi-cally, but inwardly in the spirit. That inward liberty must be the cause and reason of his outward liberty. His haart must be free from all degrading passions, his mind from all confusing prejudices and falsehoods. Of equality there are two kinds the false, which reduces all intellects and all characters to a dead level, and gives the same power to the bad as the good, to the wise as the foolish, ending thus in practising the grossest inequality; and the true equality, wherein each has power to educate and use whatever faculties fac-ulties or talent God has given him; and there are equal opportunities for unequal characters, and every man is rewarded, not according to the quantity quan-tity he has done, but according to the proportion between what he has done and what he was able to do, so that of him to whom little is given, little is expected, and he to whom most is given carries only with him the more awful weight of responsibility. Of brotherhood, also, there are two kinds the false, when a man chooses who shall be his brothers, and whom he will treat as such, when he claims his own class as brothers, also when he claims men of his own opinions as brothers, and not men who differ from him; and true brotherhood, in which a man believes that all are his brothers broth-ers ,and not of the flesh, or of the man, but of God, whose childern they are all alike, when he feels it absurd and impossible, im-possible, and a practical denial of the very name of brotherhood, to fraternize with one class and not with his enemies, en-emies, as absurd as it would be in him if, from private prejudice, he called only one of his mother's sons brother, and denied his eternal and God-given relations with ail the rest. Charles Kingsley. |