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New Testaments. Delaware went still further, and demanded of every public officer a declaration of belief in the doctrine of the Trinity. The two Carolinas and Georgia required of every public functionary that he should profess the Protestant religion. Yet it is evident that in all these provisions the end in view was not the exclusion of any particular sect from the civil franchise, but the assertion of the religious basis of civil government. In Maryland and in South Carolina the public support of religion was still recognized as a duty of the State.

This conviction, however, naturally found its most emphatic assertion in New England, where the public support of religion was most strongly intrenched in popular tradition. As Connecticut continued under her colonial charter, without adopting a constitution, she escaped, for the time, any discussion of the question; but in Massachusetts it had already provoked a bitter controversy, and in the debates which preceded the adop tion of the Constitution of 1780 it became the engrossing topic. The third article of the Bill of Rights, forming part of the Constitution, empowered the Legislature to make suitable provision "for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality." Against the whole principle of a public support of religion the Baptists had long been vehemently protesting. They had felt especially aggrieved by a law, passed in 1753, which enacted that no person should be reckoned of their persuasion whose name was not included in a list, the correctness of which must be attested by three Baptist churches. By a subsequent statute this list was required to be annually exhibited to the assessors of each town. Repeated complaints were made of grievous persecutions, and the year before the first blood of the Revolution was shed at Lexington, no less than eighteen members of a Baptist church were imprisoned in Northampton jail for refusing to pay ministerial rates. Remonstrances were laid before members of the Continental Congress then in session at Philadelphia, and before the Massachusetts Congress at Cambridge. At the Philadelphia conference, which was simply an informal meeting of certain members of the Congress, Samuel Adams intimated "that the complaints came from enthusiasts who made it a merit to suffer persecution"; while John Adams declared "that a

change in the solar systém might be expected as soon as a change in the ecclesiastical system of Massachusetts." The opinions of the most serious supporters of the law will be found reflected in the annual Election sermons of the period. In 1770, Samuel Clark, of Cambridge, declares, "that in a flourishing and respectable civil state the worship of God must be maintained." In 1776, Samuel West, of Dartmouth, says that laws for "maintaining public worship and decently supporting the teachers of religion" are "absolutely necessary for the well-being of society." "The restraints of religion would be broken down," said Phillips Payson of Chelsea, in 1778, "by leaving the subject of public worship to the humors of the multitude." Rulers, affirmed Simeon Howard of Boston, in 1780, should have power to encourage religion, "not only by their example, but by their authority"; power not only "to punish profaneness and impiety," but to "provide for the institution and support of the public worship of God." Α government which should neglect this would be guilty of "a daring affront to Heaven." These facts are sufficient to show that, while no desire existed with the great majority of the American people to retain religious establishments, the doctrine that the civil and the spiritual order were essentially related still had a powerful hold on the public conscience. Nor should this opinion be regarded as the result of any special ecclesiastical prejudice. On the contrary, it received its most impressive statement from laymen. Thus when Chief Justice Parsons, who was not at the time a member of any church, entered upon his official career, he took the earliest opportunity to express, in the most solemn manner, his conviction of the necessity of a public support of religious institutions; and still later, Judge Story declared that "it yet remained a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent where the public worship of God and the support of religion constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state."

It is only when we call to mind facts like these, that we can appreciate the full extent of the revolution in public sentiment which the past century has witnessed. To this result three wholly distinct causes have contributed. The first of these

was the number of religious organizations, widely differing in doctrine and worship, which rendered any public support of religion almost impracticable, although many of these bodies regarded such support without disfavor. A second cause was the conscientious objection of certain sects to any recognition of religion by the civil power. The third and most decisive cause was the rise of the secular theory of the state, a part of the great political development of modern times. Those who defended this theory did not profess, like the Baptists, to be governed by any religious scruples, but advanced the broad doctrine that state and church were inherently and essentially distinct. The great representative of this view was Mr. Jefferson, and it found its first expression in the famous Virginia act of 1785, which, in after years, he looked back upon as the most creditable achievement of his life. The phraseology of this act reflects no less distinctly than the Declaration of Independence "the semi-juridical, semi-popular opinions which were fashionable in France," and marks a decisive epoch in the development of American political theories. The change is illustrated in the two most famous of our political documents. When the Declaration of Independence was drawn up, it was still deemed proper to insert a solemn appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world, and an expression of reliance upon the protection of Divine Providence; but when the Federal Constitution was framed, a transaction surely not less vitally related to the well-being of the nation, all recognition of a higher than secular authority was carefully excluded, the sole allusion to religion being the provision that "no religious tests should ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the United States." The First Amendment provided, further, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Federal Constitution imposed no restriction upon the religious legislation of the States, and did not directly affect their action, yet its thoroughly secular character came more and more to stamp itself upon them, till at length all trace of the former connection between church and state had disappeared. Laws for the support of public worship lingered in Connecticut till 1816, and in Massachusetts till 1833, and religious tests in

several States for a few years longer. But public opinion, from which all laws proceed, at length decided that the State, in its essence, was a "purely political organism." Provisions regulating the public establishment of religion, requiring the compulsory support of religious teachers, enforcing attendance upon public worship, restraining the free exercise of religious functions or the free expression of religious belief, have been expunged from the statute-book of every State. Not only does the maxim universally prevail that no particular form of religion should receive the countenance of law, but the far more comprehensive principle, that the spiritual and secular provinces are essentially distinct. Although our practice has not always been consistent with this maxim, yet in the main we have come to accept a secular theory of government. The effect of this upon our political life would furnish an inviting topic for discussion, but we are here concerned only with its bearings upon our religious progress.

There is no necessary connection between separation of church and state and the subdivision of the former into a variety of independent sects. On the contrary, the first three centuries of the Christian era show that a catholic and a selfsustaining Christianity are not incompatible. Still, the unique circumstances which shaped the settlement of the thirteen colonies, collecting on these shores the representatives of so many nationalities, at the crisis when their religious convictions were stimulated to the highest pitch, involved contrasts in ecclesiastical and theological opinion which the perfect legal equality subsequently established powerfully heightened. That tendency to carry conscientious differences to the point of separation, which Luther and his compeers bequeathed as a legacy to modern Christendom, was freed in this country from the restraints which held it partially in check in every Protestant state of Europe. The German elector, the Dutch burgomaster, the English king, however they differed on other points, were all agreed in giving legal preference to some particular form of faith. Here, for the first time, Protestant sects stood on an equal footing, and the national result was a variety of religious organizations unexampled in the Old World. This result had already shown itself before the Revolution; and Dr. Gordon, the future

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historian of the war, tells us how much he was edified when he landed at Philadelphia, in 1770, by the spectacle of "Papists, Episcopalians, Moravians, Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, and Quakers passing each other peacefully, and in good temper, on the Sabbath, after having broken up their respective assemblies." What the good doctor saw that Sunday morning was a panorama of our future religious history; for the annals of religion in this country are the annals, not of one great national church, but of many separate communions; and in no other way can we so clearly present to ourselves the external features, at least, of our religious progress as by placing in contrast the leading religious denominations as they existed a century ago and as they exist to-day. Such general comparisons do not, of course, disclose the more subtile modifications of religious life, but they help us to estimate the leading drift. And although it has come to be the fashion, with some, to speak slightingly of the "popular religions," it is by no means certain that opinions are less significant simply because numbers have embraced them.

At the beginning of the Revolution the Congregationalists, although confined mainly to New England, formed by far the most numerous and influential body. As the total population of the country was still a matter of conjecture, religious statistics must, of course, be accepted with allowance; yet, according to the most careful estimate, the Congregationalists, at this time, did not possess less than seven hundred churches. The number of clergy was rather less. But it was not in numbers simply that the great strength of the body lay. Unlike any other ecclesiastical organization then existing in the country, the Congregational churches were a vigorous native growth. Their distinctive polity, originally a part of the civil framework, was still linked with the same traditions. Hence resulted the important circumstance that they had never been a dissenting body, and had never felt that galling sense of inferiority which is provoked by comparison with more favored rivals. From the beginning they had been distinguished for conscious independence and proud self-respect. They had been sometimes harsh in their bearing towards others; but they had never themselves been welded together by any com

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