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ing to absolute indignity! As to the injustice of the system, it is well known. The dissenter is excluded from the universities. In fact, he can neither be born, nor baptized, nor married, nor buried, but under the opprobrium of the law.*

And now what is alleged in defence of this state of things? No principle or pretence of justice that ever I have heard, but only the principle of expediency. It is said that monopoly and exclusion here are necessary. It is said that religion cannot be supported in dignity and honour, without ample endowments and rich benefices. It is said that no reliance whatever can be placed upon the voluntary principle. It is constantly alleged that America has failed in the attempt to sustain religion upon that basis.

This question will make our religious statistics -an account, that is to say, of the number of our churches and the number of their attendants, and of the salaries of their pastors-a matter of very great importance. When this account is made out, I have no doubt that it will redound to the triumph of the voluntary principle. I have no

* That is to say, there can be no legal registration of his birth ; his baptismal certificate does not entitle him to legal marriage; and he can receive neither marriage nor burial from the hands of his own pastor.

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doubt it will appear, that, in proportion to the population, more people attend church in America, and larger funds are raised for the support of public worship and instruction, than in any other country. I have no doubt it will appear that religion may be left for its support to the feelings which it inspires in the world; that it needs; no more than science or literature, the patronage of governments; that it may, in fine, be safely confided to the care of Heaven, and to the piety of its children.

But it is not enough to say that religion does not want the state; it is injured by the state. It always suffers from its union with the state. State patronage tends to give religion a mercenary and a mechanical character. Religion is liable to lose something of its vital character, when it is made to depend on a compulsory support. And it ceases, moreover, to be a common interest, when its affairs are managed, when its institutions are regulated, and its officers are appointed, by a few.

Government has no business to intermeddle with religion. It may extend a general countenance and fostering care to it, as it may to learning and the arts. But it might as well, as fitly, undertake to prescribe what men shall think about matters of science, or what shall be the laws of criticism

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and taste, as to prescribe religious creeds and the methods of enforcing them. The proper business of government is to take charge of the political and civil interests of a kingdom. The moment they enter into the interior departments of the mind-those interior regions of thought and feeling, where the mind for itself, and in perfect freedom, must work out its own welfare-they show that they are entirely out of their sphere, by their complete inefficiency to do good, and their powerful efficiency to do evil.

Is not this one reason, in fact, why Christianity has failed to set up that empire in the minds of men, which it was evidently designed and destined to obtain? Is it not, in part, because its pure, simple, solemn authority has been enfeebled by the intervention of political patronage and influence? Has it not been ambitious to make itself strong, not in men's consciences, but in establishments, and enactments, and creeds, and forms? Has it not thus been made a worldly interest, rather than a spiritual conviction? a due observance of rites, rather than a strict practice of virtues? a creed rather than a faith, and an institution rather than an action-the great action of life? Has not the effect of state interposition been in fact to sever religion from the heart-since it has taken religion

into its own keeping, and will not trust it to the care, or free examination, of individual minds; since it has mystified and disguised the simple matter of keeping the heart, which is the whole matter of Christianity, with tests and prescriptions, and with state machinery of all sorts; so that inward virtue has been accounted nothing, by the temporal power, in comparison with outward compliance; so that the former, if it chance to be coupled with dissent, has been marked out for injury and disgrace, while the latter, however unprincipled, has been the passport to the highest honours, privileges, and trusts!

However this may be, there certainly is an amazing insensibility in the world to the spiritual character of Christianity, which seems to require some special reasons to account for it. And I must venture to say, that bad as the case is with us in America, it seems to me considerably worse in this country. Whoever shall visit this, the most religious nation in Europe, will find an acknowledged neglect of religion and laxity of morals among the higher classes, an acknowledged ignorance of religion and inattention to its rites among the lower classes; yes, and an acknowledged coldness and mercenary spirit among many of the established clergy of this country, that will fill his

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mind with painful emotions, if not with painful questions.*

* I can never forget the effect of this spectacle, as I observed it, upon the mind of that celebrated Indian philosopher and Christian, who, instead of being permitted to fulfil the hopes of multitudes in a life of eminent usefulness, was destined to fall in the midst of his philanthropic labours, and to leave his remains to sleep far from his kindred, in the bosom of a strange land. There was something-I may say here, since it is not altogether foreign to my purpose in introducing him—there was something touching in the very appearance, and certainly in the fate of this distinguished stranger, when viewed in contrast with the climate and country which he came to visit, and in which, as it proved, he came to die. A child of the soft Indian clime, with all the guileless simplicity and tenderness of a child; with a mind and a frame flexible and swayed to each gentler impulse, as if it were to the soft, luxurious, Asiatic breeze of his own native valleys; with an all-embracing philanthropy, of which his oriental manners, all freedom and tenderness, were the fit expression-he appeared to me, amid the cold regions alike, and cold manners of the North, as a being dragged from some more genial sphere; and there was something touching, almost as if it were cruel, in the fate, by which such a being was destined to sink beneath a clime, and to mingle his dust with a country, that were not his, nor, in any respect, like his own.

I must not, however, here linger upon the person and manners of this great and good man, but hasten to observe that one of the most interesting private purposes, with which Rammohun Roy came to Europe, was to witness a practical illustration of Christianity. He had revolved the truths of this pure and sublime system in his mind at home-the beautiful theory, the perfect

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