avowed atheism of the Revolution and the undisguised indifference of the Empire were succeeded in France by the ultramontane revival of the Restoration; the bold rationalism of Germany issued in the transcendental schools, and the various modifications of German theology and criticism; the evangelical movement in the English Church was followed by the great tractarian reaction; while the Council of the Vatican, contemptuously ignoring the political reverses of the papacy, proceeded to enunciate dogmas which touch, in their application, every state in Christendom. And while ecclesiastics and statesmen have been busied with these discussions, science has advanced new theories, which threaten to wipe out the lines of former controversies. In the vast range of investigation and argument thus disclosed, the most earnest and most adventurous thought of our time has found ample scope for utterance. It is certainly a matter of no little interest to ascertain what part we have played in this great drama, and how much we have contributed to the solution of these perplexing problems. From an estimate of the mere intellectual value of our civilization such inquiries could hardly be omitted.

In a survey of our religious progress covering so long a period, and presenting so many phases, of course only the more salient and characteristic features can be noted. No mention can be made of those exceptional manifestations of the religious sentiment, or those reactions of individual opinion, which, however interesting in themselves, have left no distinct mark on the public mind. It is the main current, not the side eddies, that must be considered. What seeds, now small and despised, shall attain hereafter a vigorous growth, it remains for time to show. A treatment so general is embarrassed with peculiar difficulties, on account of the unexampled diversity of religious phenomena which our history exhibits. To disentangle from this confused mass any common tendencies, to evolve from this dissonance any rhythmic movement, may seem at first sight an unpromising experiment, and one that to some, no doubt, will appear the less inviting from the pervading unpicturesqueness of our religious annals. The thrilling epochs of Old World history are when

the cross and altar fill the foreground of the picture; when the brilliant narrative groups on a single stage all the heroic and venerable figures; but the huge bulk of our American Christianity is broken into many fragments; its energetic life is poured through various and widely separated channels; whatever of romance gilds it belongs to its earliest youth. Yet neither the lack of romantic interest, nor the hindrances to a satisfactory analysis, should deter any one from an honest attempt to measure the real success of an experiment in which such great and manifold issues are involved.

We shall follow the most simple method if we fix our attention, at the outset, on the external features of our religious history; and, beyond question, the most characteristic of these is the entire separation that obtains, both in our Federal and State systems, between the ecclesiastical and the civil province. So heartily is this accepted, and so unhesitatingly is it maintained, that it ought, perhaps, to be regarded less as an external feature than as a fundamental maxim of our body politic. He who should deny it would find it hard to gain a hearing, and would be fortunate if he escaped the reproach of holding an unfriendly attitude towards popular liberty itself. "It belongs to American liberty," says Leiber, " to separate entirely from the political government the institution which has for its object the support and diffusion of religion." The broad line of demarcation between the opinions of to-day and those which prevailed a century ago can nowhere be more distinctly traced than precisely at this point; and the contrast that is presented the more deserves attention for the reason that it has hardly been touched upon with sufficient discrimination even by our best historians. That in all the colonies, previous to the Revolution, there existed a connection, more or less close, between religion and the state, is a fact often repeated and sufficiently familiar. Such a connection may be established in two ways: negatively, by means of tests excluding from public office or the civil franchise the professors of a certain faith; or, positively, by means of legislation providing for religious establishments, or for the support of public worship. The thirteen colonies afforded illustration of all these modes. In all there existed religious tests, unless we regard as an unauthorized

interpolation a clause by which, in the community which welcomed the virtuous Berkeley, Montesquieu and Turgot would have been accounted aliens. Even Delaware and Pennsylvania, refusing any legal preference of religion, denied the franchise to all who did not profess faith in Jesus Christ. Most of these tests were borrowed from English law, and were due to the exigencies of English politics. But throughout the southern colonies the Church of England enjoyed a legal recognition. Into Georgia, where the social influences that operated farther north hardly found a place, it was introduced by the second royal governor. Unmindful of the principles which the wise foresight of Locke had sought to fix in the "Grand Model," South Carolina had taken the first step in the same direction before the close of the seventeenth century. In North Carolina it had found a place, though with meagre results, early in the eighteenth. In Virginia it was coeval with the civil constitution; and in Maryland, originally founded on the principle of complete toleration, it had so far triumphed that in the colony which Calvert had planted the rites of the Church of Rome could no longer be celebrated. And in New Jersey and New York, where the church was not established, it basked in the sunshine of an official countenance that secured it a hardly inferior advantage. Yet all this was but an attempt to transplant to the New World institutions which in the Old were already smitten with decay. The establishment remained a sickly exotic, striking no deep roots into the soil, and it almost withered away when scorched by the fervent heat of the Revolutionary epoch.

The statement has been repeated by writers who should be better informed, that before the Revolution the Congregational church system was established after the same plan in the colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts. But in these two colonies there was not only no religious establishment, even the bare suggestion of one had drawn forth an energetic protest. When we study their institutions we encounter an experiment the novel and unique features of which have been too much overlooked. It was not even a reproduction, on these shores, of the scheme of Calvin,- at least as that scheme was expounded by his disciple Cartwright, and indorsed by the English Pres

byterians; for that claimed for the ecclesiastical a complete independence of the civil power. From the decrees of the clergy there was no appeal. The church was a self-subsisting spiritual republic; and the province of the civil ruler was simply to see that her discipline was carried out. According to this theory, church and state were essentially distinct, and might come into angry collision. But the plan devised by the founders of Massachusetts aimed at a blending of the two. In their view," the order of the churches and of the commonwealth" formed a complete and harmonious whole. It was a prophecy of the new heavens and of the new earth. Between church and state there could exist no antagonism, when both were alike but shapes in which one informing spirit masked itself. It is true that long before the Revolution this singular system had passed away. By the charter of William and Mary toleration had been extended to all Protestant creeds, and the right of suffrage was no longer restricted to church-members. But the ideas out of which this experiment had grown still survived in a profound conviction of the indissoluble alliance between the spiritual and civil order; and the stanch devotion of the colony to her traditions proved itself in an enactment requiring every town to support a religious teacher. This legislation rested on the unwavering conviction that religion was the foundation of society, and that the furtherance of religion was one of the prime functions of the body politic. Before we flout the legislators of Massachusetts for being behind the age, we should ascertain precisely what they sought to do. They were not emptying into the cup of colonial liberty the dregs of an old experiment. The support of religion, not the endowment of any specific church establishment, was what they had in mind. No doubt the overwhelming majority of the population were attached to the same form of faith, yet the statute left it open for each town to decide what ecclesiastical order it would adopt. An arrangement more liberal in principle never was devised. The theory thus applied to churches was precisely the same that was applied to schools. In this respect the minister and the schoolmaster stood on exactly the same footing. Every argument that could be adduced in favor of giving public support to one could be adduced in favor of

giving the same support to the other also. Religion and education were alike essential to the welfare of the state, and it was equally the concern of the state to see that both should flourish. When the number of dissenters from the early faith had sufficiently increased, the law was modified so as to allow each separate congregation to claim its proportion of the ecclesiastical tax for the support of a clergyman of its own persuasion. It contemplated no exclusive privilege.

The conservative character of our Revolution was shown in nothing more distinctly than in the deliberate manner in which, under the new political order, the several states proceeded to modify the old relations between religion and the civil power. Of necessity the formal church establishments which existed. at the South, identified as they were both in origin and form with a foreign and hostile power, at once fell to pieces. But it is a somewhat rhetorical exaggeration of the fact when our foremost historian tells us "that from the rivers of Maine and the hills of New Hampshire to the mountain valleys of Tennessee and the borders of Georgia, one voice called to the other that there should be no connection of church and state." On the contrary, in every one of the new constitutions. framed under the Declaration of Independence, with the single excep tion of that of New York, some connection of church and state was expressly recognized. Many of the restrictions that were retained may be properly described as "shreds of an old system" or "incidental reminiscences of ancient usages." Such especially were the tests, having their origin not so much in religious as in political antagonisms, which denied the franchise to Roman Catholics. These purely negative provisions, which in this country had little meaning, and were readily eliminated, were of a wholly different nature from positive enactments in which some of the States embodied the conviction that religion lay at the foundation of civil government. Thus into the Constitution of Maryland, adopted the very year in which independence was declared, a provision was inserted making belief in the Christian religion the condition of holding any public office. Massachusetts, four years later, retained a similar condition. In Pennsylvania every member of the Legislature was required to avow his belief in God and in the inspiration of the Old and