referred to, is probably the only one in the United States, among the protestant ministers at least: any others are most likely foreigners, who have not yet entered largely into the spirit of our institutions and our people. On no one point, I am confident, are the evangelical clergy of the United States, of all churches, more fully agreed, than in holding that a union of church and state would prove one of the greatest calamities that could be inflicted on us. This is the very language I have heard a thousand times from our best and ablest men, in speaking on the subject."*

To these individual testimonies we may add the general and well-known fact, that the absence of all connexion between the church and the state, or, to use a characteristic American phrase, the entire freedom of religion, constitutes a topic of frequent eulogy and gratulation at the great religious anniversaries. The same sentiment is inwrought into literary and philosophical lectures, and evidently rules in the popular mind. We will adduce a single example of this kind.

"If man is free in view of earth, who shall bind his soul in view of heaven? If it be good to deprive the state of power to bind man's will and acts, except so far as clear necessity requires, in temporal things, that rule applies with far more force and clearness in spiritual things. For, if the state desire an engine to oppress its people, none has been more near at hand, or more effectual in every age, than a state religion; or if a faction should desire to use the state for evil purposes, no principle resides in man to which so many and so effectual appeals have been made as to a perverted religious sentiment. Then, if people or governments desire security, let every state and all religion be always separate. Not that a state shall have no God; for then most surely will God reject that state. But as factions in the state are not the constitution, so let not sects in religion become the government. And as all political opinions * Baird, p. 252,

are free, so also let all religious opinions be: but as all overt acts that endanger the public security, peace, or order, are to be punished, though they be called political, and even proceed from settled principle, so also overt religious acts that threaten or hurt society are not to be allowed, although men say they have exclusive reference to God. Religion, of all things, may be most free, because, of all things, most of its varieties may well consist with public security, which is the great end of law.

"In religion, then, absolute freedom, and thorough independence of the state, is best for itself, and safest for the world. The state must punish acts of open wrong, and suppress practices which hurt the public peace or decency; not because they are irreligious acts or practices, but because they are hurtful, indecent, or unjust.

Religion is the strongest necessity of the human soul; no people have done without it, none ever will. Rather than have no God, men worship things which they themselves see to be both corrupt and despicable. Sooner than be destitute of some settled faith, they will attempt to credit things too gross to be believed, and do things too gross to be detailed. They who at any time have escaped this mighty influence, have done so only after having discovered the vile delusions by which they had been misled, and the terrible pollution of those who seduced them into sin, professing to guide them to God; and even these have soon returned again submissive to the all-pervading power of nature; which, even while they pretended to cast off, they showed their proneness to obey by every freak of superstition and credulity. All commonwealths may trust as implicitly that man must be religious, as that he is capable to rule himself. His rule may be unwise, his religion false and corrupt; his rule may be subverted, and his religion itself destroyed. But as there is no better security on which to build a state than to rely on his ability to rule himself, so there is no certainty so great, and yet so

safe, that religion will exist, as to rely on man's proneness to it. Here ends the duty of the state, and here begins that of the church of God. The way is free and wide: the heart of man, tossed to and fro, is panting for what it never finds but in the peace of God; and here the heavenly messenger is sent to teach, to guide, to quicken, sanctify, and save. Here is our commonwealth, and there our church. Here is our agent to consolidate our freedom, to secure our rights, to guard our growing greatness, to watch and provide the means whereby the humblest citizen may be prepared for honest competence, and real though obscure usefulness. But yonder is our home, our last and blessed abode,-not built of men, but God; and He, his word, his Spirit, his messenger, his glorious grace, need little help of human governments, far less their guidance, titles, power, and riches, and least of all their glittering swords or noisome dungeons, to win our Father's children to the skies. A stranger's voice they do not know; a stranger's steps they will not follow; and from the voice of man's authority their spirits shrink; and at the sound of the armed tread of power, the timid bird of peace flies backward into heaven. O that the wise would learn that in their carnal wisdom they are but fools with God; and the strong know that God's weakness is mightier than their strength!"

This passage is taken from a discourse on the Formation and Development of the American Mind, delivered before the Literary Society of Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, on the 29th of September, 1837, by Robert J. Breckenridge, A.M. We may add to it, before concluding this chapter, a similar testimony from the pen of the Rev. Dr. Rice, of Richmond, Virginia.

"Religion," says Dr. Rice, "to be completely successful, must be free. Experience shows that, in this country, it has the energy of liberty-it has free course, and is glorified. Beyond a doubt it will ultimately triumph. At this time

E

(1829) there are more than a million of communicants in the several protestant churches in the United States-probably a larger proportion than exists in any other country in the world. The number increases at the rate of one hundred thousand a year. Such increase is perfectly unexampled since the days of the apostles. Religion will triumph, and no power on earth can prevent it. And it will triumph precisely because it is perfectly free. The intelligent clergy of all denominations understand this, and would be the very foremost to oppose any effort to bind religion to the care of the state."*

To these testimonies may be added one of very recent date, borne by Dr. Baird at the Conference of the Evangelical Alliance in August, 1851. Speaking of the support of public worship and the diffusion of religion in the United States, he says "This duty devolves upon the people; and, after an experiment which may well be pronounced to be sufficient, the sentiment is universal with us, that we would on no account have this task placed in other hands."+

These quotations lead us naturally to the subject of our next chapter.

* High Church Principles opposed to our Republican Institutions. By J. H. Rice, D.D.

+Baird's statistical paper.

CHAPTER II.

ITS DIRECT RESULTS.

It would have been out of nature and possibility, that the effectuation of so great a change should have been without its immediate and temporary inconveniences, and even mischiefs. A large amount of these may readily be admitted without any disadvantage to the new system, which is to be judged of by its remote and permanent, rather than by its immediate and transient results. No disturbance of things as they are-that is to say, no improvement-can take place without its proportion of momentary evil.

The change was most sorely felt in Virginia. It came upon the established church there when it had been much depressed by other causes, both ecclesiastical and political. The profligacy of a large proportion of the clergy had for a long period alienated from it public respect; it became still more unpopular during the revolutionary war, in consequence of the loyalty of the episcopal clergy generally to the British crown; it suffered much, from necessity, accident, and design, by the war itself, of a considerable part of which Virginia was the immediate theatre; and, finally, the entire period of the conflict was, of course, eminently unfavourable for religious efforts. Thus depressed by other causes, the loss of her establishment was a heavier blow to the episcopal church of Virginia, than it would have been in other circumstances; and in the years immediately following the revolution, her