This coming Sunday, the massive “Tommy Robinson” event in London will have come and gone. Free speech is the agenda and the defence of British values and culture. Rightly so. But let me remind you of the words of a fine Englishman from the end of the last Century, and who put his finger perfectly on what any cultural revolution must be based upon for it not to descend into merely alternative forms of despotism and sin:
“While I bid men not undervalue English liberty, so also on the other hand I charge them not to overvalue it. Never forget that temporal slavery is not the only slavery, and temporal freedom not the only freedom. What shall it profit you to be a citizen of a free country, so long as your soul is not free? What is the use of living in a free land like England, with free thought, free speech, free action, free conscience, so long as you are a slave to sin, and a captive to the devil? Yes: there are tyrants whom no eye can see, as real and destructive as Pharaoh or Nero! There are chains which no hands can touch, as true and heavy and soul withering as ever crushed the limbs of an African! It is these tyrants whom I want you this day to remember. It is these chains from which I want you to be free. Value by all means your English liberty, but do not overvalue it. Look higher, further than any temporal freedom. In the highest sense let us take care that we are free.”
(J. C. Ryle, Practical Religion).
firebrandnotes.com 