"Christianity has but one aim, which is not to exalt its teacher, but to improve the disciple; not to fasten Christ's name on mankind, but to breathe into them His spirit of universal love. Christianity is not a religion of forms. It has but two ceremonies, as simple as they are expressive; and these hold so subordinate a place in the New Testament that some of the best Christians question or deny their permanent obligation. Neither is it a narrow creed, or a mass of doctrines which find no support in our rational nature. It may be summed up in a few great, universal, unchangeable principles, which both reason and conscience, as far as they are unfolded, adopt and rejoice in as their own everlasting laws, and which open perpetually enlarging views to the mind. 

As far as I am a Christian, I am free. My religions lays on me not one chain. It does not prescribe a certain range for my mind, beyond which nothing can be learned. It speaks of God as the Universal Father, and sends me to all His works for instruction. It does not hem me round with a mechanical ritual, it doesn't join forms, attitudes, and hours of prayer, it doesn't descend into details of dress and food, it doesn't put on me one outward badge. It teaches and enkindles love to God, but commands no precise expressions of this sentiment. It prescribes prayer; but lays the chief stress on the prayer of the closet, and treats all worship as worthless but that of the mind and heart. It teaches us to do good, but leaves us to devise for ourselves the means by which we may best serve mankind. 

In a word, the whole religion of Christ may be summed up in the love of God and of mankind, and it leaves the individual to cherish and express this spirit by the methods most accordant with his own condition and peculiar mind. 

Christianity is eminently the religion of freedom. The views which it gives of the parental, impartial, goodness of God, and of the equal right of every human being to inquire into His will, and its instructions of candor, forbearance, and mutual respect, contribute alike to freedom of thought and enlargement of the heart. I repeat it, Christianity lays on me no chains. It is anything but a contrivance for spiritual domination.