In our country we ask no toleration for religion and its free exercise, but we claim it as an inalienable right.

The Son of God, prompted by the same infinite love, laid aside his divine glory and mode of existence, emptied himself exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, even unto the death of the cross.

Without His Resurrection the death of Christ would be of no avail, and His grave would be the grave of all our hopes. A gospel of a dead Savior would be a miserable failure and delusion. The Resurrection is the victory of righteousness and life over sin an death.

Jesus Christ is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all. In the Gospels he walks in human form upon the earth, and accomplishes the work of redemption.

Religion and liberty are inseparable. Religion is voluntary, and cannot, and ought not to be forced. This is a fundamental article of the American creed, without distinction of sect or party. Liberty, both civil and religious, is an American instinct. Such liberty is impossible on the basis of a union of church and state, where the one of necessity restricts or controls the other. It requires a friendly separation, where each power is entirely independent in its own sphere.

To give up faith in Christ is to give up faith in humanity; to believe in Christ is to believe in the redeption and final glorification of men; and this faith is the best inspiration to a holy and useful life for the good of our race of the glory of God.

Those who make pictures of the Savior, who is God as well as man in one inseparable person, either limit the incomprehensible Godhead to the bounds of created flesh, or confound his two natures like Eutyches, or separate them, like Nestorius, or deny his Godhead, like Arius; and those who worship such a picture are guilty of the same heresy and blasphemy.