LMS 5-No. 850, August 31, V p. m., from London.
 
      
 
 
For the purpose of this ceremony we can content ourselves 
      with putting and keeping our own houses in order.
 
      
 
 
To do so, we can legitimately observe events in other lands 
      and profit from them. We can and must be eternally on guard that 
      our own nations do not swerve from the path of free living which 
      our forefathers marked out for us so plainly, and at such great 
      cost. The preservation of the essentials of democracy is as precious 
      a goal in Scotland as it is in the United States.
 
      
 
 
One of the main -- perhaps the main pillar of the edifice 
      of democracy is freedom of worship. Many bitter wars have been 
      fought over the issue. Its infringement --or what they believed 
      to be its infringement -- led a band of determined, courageous, 
      but bitter men to leave England three hundred years ago to build 
      what was to become the United States of America. Then, as now, 
      the kind of people we are will not stand for any abridgment of 
      their fundamental right to worship as their consciences dictate.
 
      
 
 
It would appear safe at this moment to predict that freedom 
      of religion is beyond attack in our countries. There seems to 
      be no serious threat, and there has not been one for many years, 
      to that particular civil liberty --the most