rade, and mendacious pretence; founding a lodge, which, though rude as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, some misty-eyed skeptics would exalt to share the glory of the Christian Church; at best securing from his followers the abstinence of anchorites, but lighting up to them no golden visions of streets of celestial cities which they were to win; retailing borrowed learning, and reproducing Eastern mystic observances with sepulchral voice from behind the sombre veil; like a Carmelite or a Franciscan, challenging attention by a pretentious plainness of garb and austerity of tone; a politician, a philosopher, a physiologist, an astronomer, a mathematician; but with no finger wreathed with power from heaven to raise the dead; with no tongue touched with a live coal to disclose the secrets of the future. Pythagoras is but a phantasmagorial spectre, starting forward as the lenses are adjusted by the skeptical hand, to rattle his bones, and threaten with his skeleton arm; but, in the very nature of the case, the moment when he towers the most like a giant, about to diminish in his proportions, and recede in the distance, the merest shadow of a shade.

Skepticism must go elsewhere to gather materials for an onset upon Christianity. The philosophers of Greece have never been of service, when called from their own sphere to witness against Christ. The edge of their weapons has ever been turned, in the end, against those who so ignorantly, and with so great presumption, have called them into the field to do battle for untruth.

ARTICLE III.

THE AMERICAN STATE AND CHRISTIANITY.

It is the pride and boast of the American citizen, that this is a land of religious freedom, that here men are trammeled by no statutes in their religious views, that they may adopt and hold whatever sentiment they choose in matters of religion, without the trouble of even an inquiry as to how they shall stand in relation to the law of the land, because there are no laws which touch the matter.

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All this is well. Yet there is a liability of mistaking the true position which the State holds to religion. In general thoughts of the perfect liberty which the ple enjoy, one may easily fall into the conclusion that the State has nothing to do with, and has no character as derived from Christianity; that it holds a relation precisely similar to every form of religion or superstition which any one of its citizens may happen to profess; that the Jew, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, all stand on the same platform, and that the government guards and cherishes each with the same care, or rather stands at the same distance from them all, and regards them all with equal unconcern.

This is an unfortunate, as it is a great mistake, and one which cannot be too sedulously guarded against. The government of this country stands in no such idle position. Far otherwise. It looks upon Christianity as upon no other form of religious belief, it protects and nourishes it as it does no other: indeed so intimately is the State connected with it, that Christianity gives character to the State, nay, more, lies at the foundation of it, and constitutes it a Christian State.

We propose to discuss this point, and to endeavor to exhibit the true relation which the government of our country holds to the religion of the Bible.

At the outset, we may say that clear and correct notions on this subject are of the last importance, that we may be kept from intolerance and bigotry on the one hand, and from unbridled license on the other; that one man may think that he may impose his religious convictions by force upon others, as little as another may feel free to trample upon, and treat with open contempt, the sacred things of the Bible. Every one should know what is the true state of the case, and what are the metes and bounds of his rights and prerogatives as an American citizen, that he may neither claim more nor demand less than that which is his by virtue of his citizenship. What, then, is the exact relation in which Christianity stands to the State? A part of the answer may be obtained from a consideration of

The origin of our country, as an American State. It was founded in religious ideas. Its history, in this respect, is peculiar and different from all other histories. For the most part, the colonies planted at the first were occasioned by the conflict of religious opinions, and with a design to give those who founded them the most perfect freedom in matters of religious belief. Nor was it a merely general intention; it was a specific design to reach a place where Christianity, according to their belief of it, could be professed, and its duties practised. They were planted by Christian men, and for Christian purposes. Whether they were Puritans or Huguenots, Roman Catholics or Protestants, however they may have differed in various points of doctrinal belief, they were all agreed on this, they were Christian colonists.

We need not linger to prove this by examples. It would embrace every colony which lived; perhaps every

one which was attempted in this land. It was not the case simply in such colonial establishments as those founded in New England by Puritans, Moravians in Georgia, or Huguenots in South Carolina, where to escape religious persecution was the object in view; but Christianity was recognised as a very prominent consideration, and its furtherance as a very special and important design, even in those with which persecution had nothing to do. The charter of Charles the Second to William Penn, when he went out to found his commonwealth, says: "Whereas, our trusty and beloved William Penn, out of a commendable desire to enlarge our English empire, as also to reduce the savages, by gentle and just measures, to the love of civil society and the Christian religion, hath humbly besought our leave to translate," &c., &c., and the first legislative act was a recognition of the Christian religion and the liberty of conscience. In what is called the Great Law, of the body of laws, in the province of Pennsylvania, the following preamble and declaration is found: "Whereas, the glory of Almighty God and the good of mankind is the reason and end of government, and, therefore, government in itself is a venerable ordinance of God, and forasmuch as it is principally desired and intended by the proprietary and government and the freemen of the province of Pennsylvania and territories thereto belonging, to make and establish such laws as shall best preserve true Christian and civil liberty, in opposition to all unchristian, licentious and unjust practices, whereby God may have his due, Cæsar his due, and the people their due," &c., &c.. The words show sufficiently what were the men and what were their purposes. And so it was in almost every case. As if to give prominence to the fact that Christianity had everything

Quoted by Judge Duncan. II Sergeant & Rawle.

to do with the settlement of our country, the colonies, which had a merely commercial object in view, resulted, for the most part, in disastrous failures. Those projected and attempted by Raleigh are glaring examples.

The origin, then, of the country was Christian. Christianity laid the foundations of the State from their lowest stone; the boats which touched first the shores were rowed by Christian men; the first acts were acts of Christian worship, and the first laws were Christian laws. Whatever may be the superstructure built upon them, it will always be true that the corner and the resting-stones were laid by Christians, and for Christianity. If it be true now, or ever shall become true, that this is not a Christian country, it will only be so because there has been a wide departure from the intentions and the work of the men who begun the State. That there has been no such departure, will sufficiently appear, when we consider

That the Christian religion is, and has been, always the profession of the majority of the people of this land. By this, of course, is not meant, that the larger portion of the people are, or ever have been, in personal connection with any of the Christian churches, or have professed to be practically acquainted with the matters of religion; but simply, that so far as religion is concerned, they are Christians in distinction from any or all other forms of belief. They are not Jews, nor Mohammedans, nor Brahmins, nor Buddhists, nor Parsees, but Christians. While, perhaps, some of every one of these forms of religion, or no religion, may have been held by citizens of this country, yet no one will for a moment think of applying the name as distinguishing the religious character of the people. Nor will it be said that this is an infidel country. There may be many persons, and there may all along have been