On such an occasion and on a subject so very serious, it would not, we think, have been out of place, or have subjected the speaker to the dreaded imputation of cant, to have made some allusion to the eternal principles of right and wrong, or to an invisible power who holds in his hands the destinies of the State, and whose holy attributes demand as much the punishment of national wickedness as of individual offences; a power that will hold us to a strict account in regard to the righteousness or recklessness of proceedings so solemn as those which involve the question of peace or war. But not a syllable of all this, although it would have so well become the time and place. Even a hint that he felt the force of any such considerations might have subjected his democracy to the suspicions of the Empire Club, and thereby essentially marred his prospect of reaching the goal of his ambition. Oh! how humiliating the thought that the destinies of the many millions who compose this great nation, should be the stakes of such gamblers and such games as these!

In connection with this digression, we may here notice that most abominable maxim-Our country, right or wrong— a maxim which would make those to be a nation's best friends, who are, in fact, her most deadly foes. Let there be planned any scheme ever so reckless or unprincipled; let it be taken up as was the case with the late measure for the annexation of Texas, from the lowest and most dishonest of political motives; its consummation, or even its partial consummation, is thought at once to take the case out of the high court of conscience. A timid opposition are by

means of this maxim, whipped into a reluctant support of the basest of measures; and that, too, when these measures have been contrived for this very purpose of putting them in a position where, if they dare to remonstrate, they may be made the objects of popular odium. The precedent is employed to give sanction to another case of the same kind, yet still more atrocious, and those who would appeal to right and conscience are insultingly warned in the language of a famous Virginia statesman, "not to burn their fingers by opposing another war," or to take a position of seeming opposition to the national interest. Seeming opposition we say, for what man, whose intellect is in healthy union with his moral sense, does not see that they are the real and truest friends of their country who strive to maintain these stern ideas of national accountability, and to keep alive a belief in the moral and religious relation of the State to the invisible and the eternal ?

Our legislative and judicial bodies, we have said, should represent the pure reason and conscience of the State. We should be more rational in our collective than in our individual acts: the animal nature should disappear as we ascend to those higher parts of our political organism, where all should be calm, pure, and abstract from the turbulence, perverseness, selfishness and irrationality of individual passions. But alas! when the doctrine of a religious national accountability and of a national conscience is dropt out of our political creed, we become far more animalized in our public than in our private relations. Opinions are put forth by the legislator in regard

offended at the name of infidel, and who speak loftily at times of the moral sentiments-men who have much to say of “ reverence for the infinite mystery," and who talk of "the higher order of religious questions," as they would of the higher mathematics-such men show their sympathetic instincts by making for you the same claim, and would even urge it as a great and liberal concession, on the part of a belief which so much transcends our poor and ordinary Christianity.

One would suppose that so wretched a sophism as is contained in this doctrine of indifference, and the manner in which it is maintained by so changing the terms of one of the premises as to include the infidel among ordinary religious sects, could deceive nobody; yet, probably, there is no one single dogma which is now exerting so pernicious an influence. And then this claim to a calm, philosophic neutrality, as though wellknown history had not furnished the most startling evidence, that infidelity, and even atheism, when triumphant, and in a condition to act out their real natures, have a fanaticism, a bigotry, a ferocious, persecuting spirit, such as false religious feeling fierce as it has been at times had never engendered. As is most truly remarked by that keen observer of human nature, the gifted author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm, "There cannot be a greater imprudence than to believe that the suavity, the tolerance, the bland indifference, and the affected liberality, which are now the garb of the infidel spirit, belong to it by nature, or would be retained a day after it had nothing to fear from its rival."

Under such a view of the matter, can we doubt, that if this principle is carried out to its ultimate extent, both in theory and practice, if it is successfully maintained that the action of the State is to have no reference to any religious sanctions, and that the holy day of our religion is to be publicly desecrated, as a practical confirmation of the doctrine,-if the oath is to be banished from our courts, to please those who believe in no God, if law is to be stripped of the inherent ideas of penalty and retribution, to please those who regard it as making no appeal to the conscience, can we doubt (in reference to these questions, so rapidly coming up, and on which the State must soon take sides, either for or against), that a decision such as the infi

del wants and demands, would be favoring the worst, the most irreligious, and as yet, to appearance, one of the smallest sects in the land. Who, also, that is acquainted with the silent, yet certain influence of law and political institutions, upon the moral sense, either for good or evil, and how necessarily the mind is affected, even from infancy, by what it is practically led to regard as the sovereign rule of civil conduct-who, we say, that understands this, can believe, that individual effort in churches and private schools can, without special and miraculous divine aid, withstand that most powerful bias to unbelief, which such a spectacle of affected indifference, yet real hostility, on the part of the State, must produce in the individual mind? No! There is, there can be no neutrality here. This is the great point we are so anxious to impress upon the mind of this, as yet, Christian community. There can be no real neutrality. The infidel knows it well. On this subject he has an instinct most keen, in discovering the means of its advantage. He understands full well the immense aid which such a position when carried out, on the part of the State, into all its practical details, must give him, in his controversy with Christianity. He laughs at the influence of the nursery, when he knows how soon the young and tender faith, before it reaches the vigor of manhood, will be confronted with the doctrine, that the State knows no God-no religion--no oath-no holy time-no true accountability-no eternal, immutable morality; and that, in its bearing upon the individual life, in the infliction of punishment, it knows no appeal to the conscience.

But who or what is to judge of the matter of fact, whether, in truth, we are a Christian and not an infidel or atheistical nation? The State itself we reply. It must judge, and cannot escape the responsibility. It must decide either one way or the other-either for or against. It must be determined by that power which, in its healthy state, we have styled the national conscience-that invisible influence, which, whether good or bad, moral or immoral, religious or irreligious, Christian or anti-Christian, diffuses itself through all the institutions of a people, affecting in innumerable ways both their public and private, their political and their individual character. is most absurd to say, then, that the

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sive and searching examination of first principles!" Even should we admit that the two subjects could, for a moment, be placed on a par, does this poor imitator of the vulgar infidel ribaldry, know that one who was not only the greatest statesman of antiquity, but also one of the most ardent lovers of republican freedom the world has ever seen, did not think even the regulation of music, and its great influence for good or evil upon the minds and habits of the people, beneath the care of the State.*

We do not contend that legislation should regulate religious exercises or religious tunes. We maintain, on the other hand, that religion-revealed religion, Christianity should regulate legislation. If, however, the State cannot be indifferent to religion in theory, neither can it be so in practice. The infidel modestly asks that his opinions shall be regarded as entitled to equal favor with Christianity. There might be some plausibility in this, if those who advocate his doctrine bore anything like a reasonable ratio to the number of professed believers; and if, in that case, parties being nearly equally divided, some middle position of neutrality might be found between religion and irreligion, or between Christianity and his own negations. To present the matter in the best light for his claim, we will suppose the parties to be thus nearly balanced, and admit that it is to be a question of number. Even on this basis, he asks by far too much. He demands that the State should favor him. Both sides cannot be gratified, and he insists that the decision should be against religion. To show that this is a fair statement, we present the issue in the very language of the school. The State must say religion, or no religion. Between these there is no middle ground, as between varying sects professing to hold, in the main, a common faith. The believer implores the State to adopt the first, the infidel insists upon the latter alternative. But why, since both cannot be gratified, should the latter gain the day? Why should the oath be taken from the statute book, the Bible banished from our schools, all allusion to a revealed divine law be interdicted to our courts and legislative bodies,-why, in short, should all connection between the visible and invisible state (of which religion, as its very etymology imports, is the bond) be severed to please him? Why, we

ask-since one or the other must be favored-is his claim in any respect superior, even although they might be equal or nearly equal in numbers? But how utterly preposterous does this appear, in connection with what we know to be the fact, namely, that the party which makes these high claims is the merest fragment of our population. Let us apply the favorite language of this sect, (as presented by the author to whom we have referred as one of their best representatives,) and turn their batteries directly against themselves. "If the State," say they, "take into favor the opinions of the majority, it tyrannizes over the religion of the minority. If it establishes the religion of the Christian, it offends the infidel." We accept the issue. If, then, the State takes into favor the opinions of the minority, and that, too, one of the smallest minorities, and those opinions, moreover, very bad opinions, by what shall we characterize its conduct towards the large majority? If the State expressly or impliedly gives countenance to the doctrines of the small band of infidels, may we not say that it is justly "offensive" to the Christian?

But hold, says the infidel; you entirely misstate the true points in issue. We only ask for impartiality and indifference, or that the State shall take a middle ground between us. Without adverting farther to the modesty of this demand on the score of numbers, and the violation of all geometrical proportion in requiring exactly a middle ground between two parties so very unequal, we say, and we have proved, that no such middle ground exists. The State must lean to one side or the other. You forget that indifference is your professed creed-a creed, too, for which you are as zealous and ofttimes as fanatical as the most ultra sectarian. You maintain, as your tenets, that the State has no God, no religion, and of course no true morality in any proper sense of that term. Christians take ground directly opposite. You insist that your dogma shall be favored; in other words that the State shall act upon it, as though as far as regards its judicial, legislative, and executive action, it were true that there is no God, no religion, no morality. You thus do, in fact, maintain that your doctrine should be established as a settled axiom of government, however offensive it may be to the vast Christian majority. Men, too, who probably would be greatly

offended at the name of infidel, and who speak loftily at times of the moral sentiments-men who have much to say of "reverence for the infinite mystery," and who talk of "the higher order of religious questions," as they would of the higher mathematics-such men show their sympathetic instincts by making for you the same claim, and would even urge it as a great and liberal concession, on the part of a belief which so much transcends our poor and ordinary Christianity.

One would suppose that so wretched a sophism as is contained in this doctrine of indifference, and the manner in which it is maintained by so changing the terms of one of the premises as to include the infidel among ordinary religious sects, could deceive nobody; yet, probably, there is no one single dogma which is now exerting so pernicious an influence. And then this claim to a calm, philosophic neutrality, as though wellknown history had not furnished the most startling evidence, that infidelity, and even atheism, when triumphant, and in a condition to act out their real natures, have a fanaticism, a bigotry, a ferocious, persecuting spirit, such as false religious feeling fierce as it has been at times had never engendered. As is most truly remarked by that keen observer of human nature, the gifted author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm, "There cannot be a greater imprudence than to believe that the suavity, the tolerance, the bland indifference, and the affected liberality, which are now the garb of the infidel spirit, belong to it by nature, or would be retained a day after it had nothing to fear from its rival."

Under such a view of the matter, can we doubt, that if this principle is carried out to its ultimate extent, both in theory and practice, if it is successfully maintained that the action of the State is to have no reference to any religious sanctions, and that the holy day of our religion is to be publicly desecrated, as a practical confirmation of the doctrine,-if the oath is to be banished from our courts, to please those who believe in no God, if law is to be stripped of the inherent ideas of penalty and retribution, to please those who regard it as making no appeal to the conscience, can we doubt (in reference to these questions, so rapidly coming up, and on which the State must soon take sides, either for or against), that a decision such as the infi

del wants and demands, would be favoring the worst, the most irreligious, and as yet, to appearance, one of the smallest sects in the land. Who, also, that is acquainted with the silent, yet certain influence of law and political institutions, upon the moral sense, either for good or evil, and how necessarily the mind is affected, even from infancy, by what it is practically led to regard as the sovereign rule of civil conduct-who, we say, that understands this, can believe, that individual effort in churches and private schools can, without special and miraculous divine aid, withstand that most powerful bias to unbelief, which such a spectacle of affected indifference, yet real hostility, on the part of the State, must produce in the individual mind? No! There is, there can be no neutrality here.

This is the great point we are so anxious to impress upon the mind of this, as yet, Christian community. There can be no real neutrality. The infidel knows it well. On this subject he has an instinct most keen, in discovering the means of its advantage. He understands full well the immense aid which such a position when carried out, on the part of the State, into all its practical details, must give him, in his controversy with Christianity. He laughs at the influence of the nursery, when he knows how soon the young and tender faith, before it reaches the vigor of manhood, will be confronted with the doctrine, that the State knows no God-no religion-no oath-no holy time-no true accountability-no eternal, immutable morality; and that, in its bearing upon the individual life, in the infliction of punishment, it knows no appeal to the conscience.

But who or what is to judge of the matter of fact, whether, in truth, we are a Christian and not an infidel or atheistical nation? The State itself we reply. It must judge, and cannot escape the responsibility. It must decide either one way or the other-either for or against. It must be determined by that power which, in its healthy state, we have styled the national conscience--that invisible influence, which, whether good or bad, moral or immoral, religious or irreligious, Christian or anti-Christian, diffuses itself through all the institutions of a people, affecting in innumerable ways both their public and private, their political and their individual character. is most absurd to say, then, that the

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spirit and general course of legislation can have no regard to this fixed fact, or that they can "let the matter entirely alone," leaving it just where they found it. They cannot "let it alone."

Admitting that the direct application of religion and morality, or their most practical teaching should be left to confederated individual, in distinction from political, actions, even then, we contend, the State must be in harmony with it; above all, it must assume no attitude of indifference towards it.

When we speak of there being a religion of the State, and of Christianity being that religion, it is not meant that all its doctrines have the same relation to the political as to the individual life. It is mainly in regard to the latter, that there arises that distinction of sects which invests the subject with all its apparent difficulties. Even here it is certainly of great importance to our true political interests, that not only the Christian religion generally, but the best and purest species of Christianity should be universally and cordially embraced. In our case, however, the obstacles in the way of effecting this are so immense, that a very great good must be abandoned to avoid a far greater evil. Here is the danger of trespassing on the domain of the true conscience. We do not say "the rights of conscience," because the phrase is unmeaning. It seems to imply that most abominable of all absurdities, as well as most mischievous of all sentiments, that men may entertain what opinions they please as an inherent right. Still less do we mean that most monstrous of all paradoxes-a conscientious right to be irreligious, or to have no conscience at all.

The State, whether it be owing to our peculiar position, or whatever may be the cause, cannot, we admit, as a State, know the denominational differences that most unfortunately divide the Christian community. It can, however, recognize, and must recognize, those great truths of Christianity, which enter directly into what may be called the State religion in distinction from what is peculiar in the individual alone. It must recognize the Almighty God who holds in his hands the destinies of nations-the Eternal ELOAH, or God of the oath, an appeal to whose punitive justice must be the ultimate sanction of all judicial proceedings, and "an end of controversy' " in all legal strife between man and man. It must ac

knowledge an eternal, immutable, and religious morality, which is but another name for the inseparable Will and Reason of a Supreme Personal Deity. It must recognize that doctrine of penal sanctions and of a true retributive justice, both in divine and human law, without which government has no real foundation. If these positions be sound, then must it also have, as a necessary consequence, its supernatural revelation, to preserve, in this world of sense, an ever clear and abiding impression of those great first truths, by means of an acknowledged written standard. And last ly-although here we venture an opinion which, as some may think, brings us on that disputed and impracticable groundit must have its holy time, set apart, not simply for rest or worship, but for the religious and moral instruction of the people, and constituting a most important and indispensable aid for the conservation of its indispensable national creed. These, more than any paper constitutions, must constitute a nation's true life. Without them the experiment is yet to be tried-and it may be with the most fearful results-whether any State can have a permanent existence.

The writer and the School to whom we referred, think that the State might as well be engaged" in teaching music and ordaining tunes" as in recognizing any religion, or the principles of any religion." Let us turn for a moment from this most dignified comparison to the great Roman lawyer. Who shall charge Tully with being a bigot, or a fanatic? Who will dare to affirm that the most practical statesman of his day was not a good judge of human nature and its wants? How much higher and more philosophical is his conception of the religious nature of the State and of the magistracy, than that shallow doctrine of the Monticello School, which some regard as the ne plus ultra, the last and greatest attainment of political wisdom.

"Sit igitur hoc a principio persuasum civibus, dominum esse omnium rerum ac moderatorem Deum, eaque quæ gerantur, ejus geri judicio ac numine. Utiles autem esse opiniones has, quis neget, quum intelligat quam multa firmentur jurejurando, quanta salutis sint fœderum religiones, quam multos divini supplicii metus a scelere revocarit, quamque SANCTA SIT SOCIE TAS civium inter ipsos, DEO immortali tum judice tum teste interposito ?"

"Let this, then, from the beginning be