FINAL REPORT ON ENROLLMENT. The Committe on Enrollment presented the following report: "The committee respectfully reports that the names of more than 250 persons from ten different States, have been enrolled as delegates to this convention. The States represented are Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia." The report of the Executive Committee was taken from the table and adopted. It is as follows: REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. Your committee would respectfully report: 1. That ten thousand copies of the proceedings of the National Convention in Philadelphia, as reported in the CHRISTIAN STATESMAN, were published and distributed gratuitously. 2. The instructions given by your committee at that meeting to secure a General Secretary for the association who would give his whole time to the work, were fulfilled in the appointment of the Rev. D. McAllister, who entered on his duties on the 1st of October, 1871. His salary was fixed at $2,500 per annum. 3. The preparation of a paper which your committee was instructed to secure on the relation of the State to religion, was undertaken by Professor Tayler Lewis, of Union College, New York. In his able hands it has grown into a treatise of considerable length and of very great value. It consists of four chapters, the first of which treats of the nature of the State; the second of the impossibility of State neutrality in matters of religion; the third, a careful definition of State theology or religious doctrines as recognized by the State, and the fourth a discussion of legislation on morals. Selections from the first two chapters will be read as part of the discussions of this Convention, and the whole paper will soon be ready for the press. 4. Your committee recommend that the number of its members be increased to twenty-five, and that the necessary change in the Constitution of the National Association be, and hereby is adopted; and that the presidents of auxiliary societies, or other persons desinated by them, be entitled to seats as ex-officio members of the committee. 5. The report of the Treasurer, herewith submitted, shows a total of receipts, from February, 1871, to Jan. 29, 1872, of $2,177, all of which, except the receipts for January, have been acknowledged in the CHRISTIAN STATESMAN. The expenditures have been $2,086 30, leaving a balance on hand at this date of $90 70. Your committee recommends that a subscription for the treasury of the association be taken up during the sessions of this convention. T. P. STEVENSON, Chairman. In accordance with the last item of the foregoing report, the Convention entered into a subscription for the furtherance of the cause. The whole amount thus secured, including a few subscriptions received too late to be reported to the Convention, was, in cash, $543,00; subscriptions payable within the year, $1,317.00; total, $1,. 860.00. While the subscription was in progress, the Rev. Chauncy Barnes, of Athens, Ohio, endeavored to secure the attention of the Convention for an exposition of what he called the "practical government of Christ on the earth." During the recess he had hung on the wall an enigmatical chart, representing his ideas, and he wished opportunity to explain it. The President decided that his remarks could not be entertained, but the gentleman persisted in speaking. Prof. Sloane :-Mr. Chairman, we cannot be responsible for the wild schemes of enthusiasts, and cannot take either the odium or the credit that attaches to them. The picture on the wall is a self-evident absurdity. I do not know what it is or what he wishes to say, but the time of the Convention cannot be taken up with matters that have no bearing on our work. Mr. Barnes at last yielded the floor. The Business Committee presented the following supplementary report, which was adopted: 1. That the delegates in this Convention be recommended to hold meetings in their respective localities to hear reports of its proceedings, and ratify the resolutions which it shall have adopted. 2. That the Executive Committee be instructed to publish in pamphlet form 20,000 copies of the proceedings of this Convention. 3. That the friends of the the movement be urged to form auxiliary associations, placing them in communication with the National Association, as the most effective method of furthering the cause. The Rev. D. McAllister then read the following paper from the pen of Prof. Tayler Lewis. It consists of extracts from the first and second chapters of the treatise on "Religion and the State," referred to in the foregoing report of the Executive Committee. The argument is not presented in its completeness, important portions being necessarily omitted for want of space. To be properly appreciated it must be read in its full, closely connected form in the treatise itself: NEUTRALITY OF THE STATE IN MORALS AND RELIGION A THING IMPOSSIBLE. The question, what is the State, may be answered theoretically, or practically. The latter mode is preferred, because it brings us most directly in contact with certain other questions intimately connected with it, and which are becoming, every day, more urgent. Instead, therefore, of attempting to give its abstract idea by any a priori reasoning, let us endeavor to ascertain what it is as a fact as a real power in the world. Its most practical definition may thus be found in what it actually does, or claims to do, and which nothing can prevent it from doing, whether any theory, true or false, would concede or deny such action as belonging to its essential nature. In thus defining it, it may be said, in the first place, that the State is a power claiming and exercising supreme jurisdiction over a certain portion of the earth. Here it acknowledges no superior unless it be God. It is the sovereign arbiter of life and death. It fixes the civil status; it regulates the social action; it determines either directly or permissively, wholly or partially, according to its sovereign pleasure, the rights, duties, and relations of all human beings within its territorial sway. The State assumes to determine the public good for which it exists, and for this end, true or false, claims the highest prerogatives of sovereignty, whether directly exercised, or for any reasons held in abeyance. It is all there, either as an active or latent force. The State takes charge of the person and of the personal conduct. It defines crime. It makes its prohibitions and commands the measure of the lawful and the right. Hence, it raises or lowers, makes consistent or inconsistent, the standard of public morals, whether it disclaim any such intention or not. It employs force to an unlimited degree. It punishes by the infliction of pain to any amount it may deem necessary. It banishes, it imprisons, it puts to death. It is, however, enough for us here simply to present the picture of an omnipotent earthly power- —a power of life and death, claiming unlimited and illimitable control over millions of human beings now existing, over generations yet unborn-determining, in fact, how they should be born, or under what conditions, with or without their consent, they should commence their individual earthly existence-above all, an educating power, educating by its laws and its political action, educating directly and positively by assuming to prescribe what shall be taught, and what shall not be taught in the schools—a power that must, to a great extent, determine the social character, and fix the moral standard of an age, or of ages yet to come. Can such a power be neutral; can it be in a state of indifference in regard to a human interest so vital, so pervasive, so ineradicable, as that of religion? To every serious and intelligent mind the question would seem to answer itself from the very force of the terms in which it is stated. There are, however, arguments drawn from both reason and experience, which put beyond all controversy the proof of such impossibility. Whatever difficulties, therefore, may be in the way of adjustment, we must prepare ourselves for the one side or the other of this dire alternative. FOR OR AGAINST. The State must be for or against religion, for or against Christianity. That which may he called the mind or the disposition of the State, as exhibited in its legislation, its jurisprudence, its general political action, and, above all, in its claim to be an educating power, must have an attitude of friendship or hostility. It can not avoid contact with this vital, all pervading influence. and that contact must be one of amity or repulsion. But what Religion? The objector who starts this query doubtless thinks that it disposes of the whole matter. Under it he raises all sorts of ad captandum difficulties, very easily suggested, but only showing his incompetency to deal with the great subject in either its theological or its political bearings. His question can be answered. The essential difference between the relation of theology to the State, or a State theology, as it may be called, and that which it bears to the individual creed, or the individual salvation, can be clearly stated, and in a way consistent with the largest civil and religious liberty. It is from confounding these two relations that all the difficulty arises. That, however, may be shown in another place.* We are concerned here with the general proposition: The State cannot be neutral; and we would boldly lay it down under the sanction of the three greatest authorities, Revelation, Reason, and Experience. Its truth could be shown by direct a priori argument, from the very nature of man and society; and on such argument would we now insist, were it not that a rapidly developing experience is furnishing an easier method, and one better adapted to the mass of readers, especially in its preparatory aspect. * One chapter of the treatise is especially devoted to the treatment of this point. IRRELIGION WILL NOT ALLOW NEUTRALITY. There was a time when with some degree of plausibility, the general question of a national acknowledgment of religion might have been regarded as purely theoretical. It is now becoming an eminently practical one. The decision will in some way force itself. It is becoming manifest, as it always will become manifest, whether in the experience of individuals or of communities, that sound theory cannot long be neglected or contemned without the risk of most serious practical evil. The impossibility of this asserted neutrality has been shown by the action of the irreligious party, or the party of indifference as they would style themselves, even when religionists were disposed—as large numbers of them are still disposed-to let the question entirely alone. It is becoming more and more manifest that professed non-religion is irreligion-not a mere negation, as its name would seem to imply, but a most positive, hostile and implacable principle of action, stronger than political party spirit, intolerant as that sometimes is-stronger even than the most bigoted religious sectarianism. It is itself a sect-the worst of all sects, the most fierce and aggressive. One must be blind indeed, or most ignorant, who does not see the evidence of this as furnished by the past century of European history, especially that of France and Germany, and as lately manifested in our own country. Unbelief, negative as it assumes to be, will not live in harmony with belief, even of the most liberal kind. It contends for supremacy; it demands that its own side be taken in all cases of collision, even when such collision is the result of its own positive and aggressive action. Atheism is "a troubled sea that cannot rest." It is an unquiet spirit that will not let Christianity alone, or cease from crying out against it, as did the ejected demons of old. It will not suffer the State to be neutral. It now demands—and its large success is encouraging it more and more to demand that from our statute books, our common laws, our judicial proceedings, our rules of evidence, our forms of indictment, our statistical records. our long settled legal maxims, our national observances, our educational methods, there shall be utterly cast out every thing that seems to recognize any religious sentiment, fact, or idea. This positive, aggressive character of irreligion, is the peculiar feature of our age. Such, indeed, was always its nature, but time is bringing out its open development in a way which the most worldly stolidity will soon find itself incapable of denying. THE CHANGED ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. Thirty years ago there might have been some apparent plea for avoiding the direct agitation of the measure now proposed, namely the acknowledgment, in the national Constitution, of God as the source of all law, the recognition of some transcending divine government, or, to adopt a more current phraseology, some "higher law" regarded as beyond the reach of change or popular amendment-something that should be to the Constitution what the Constitution is to the lower legislation of the land supposed to be enacted in accordance with it. It might then have been said—and the writer was once disposed to take that ground—we have such acknowledgment impliedly; we have it substantially, as something recognized, to a good degree, in legislation and jurisprudence, though not as clearly expressed as might be desired in our fundamental law. The State is already Christian; our laws are Christian; our courts recognize the fundamental ideas of Christian ethics; our greatest jurists, such as Kent and Story, have decided that our Common Law code rests on Christianity; the Scriptures are taught in our schools; the nation, in its public action, pays respect to religious observances; every time an oath is administered there is an appeal to the ever-living God, a recognition of a divine justice as a necessary help to the human in securing a sacredness to testimony that cannot be dispensed with, and yet cannot be derived from any mere human sources. We have all this, it might have been said; we have the substance, why then seek the shadow, which, instead of strengthening, might only cast suspicion upon the reality? Would not a mere verbal recognition have the look of a vain patronizing formality, less honoring to God-if honoring him at all-than the silent diffusion of religion and morality in our land? This was certainly plausible; but time has shown, or we might rather say, God has shown, in permitting the natural development of irreligion as a positive power, how false and inconclusive such reasoning is. THE LOGIC OF EVENTS. Whatever seeming weight it may once have had, that apologetic reasoning can now no longer be employed. The perilous experiment of ignoring a divine ruler has been tried and its failure is rapidly developing itself. God will allow no such silence, much less any such profession of indifference. We cannot escape here under the plea of collective action. The word of Christ shall show itself true: "He that is not for me is against me, he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." No reason can be given why this is not applicable to communities as well as to individuals—to everything, in short, capable of intelligent and moral action. It includes all human agencies having an influence for good or evil. Our literature must be for or against Christ. Our political economy must be grounded on His laws, or it is directly and positively antichristian. A fortiori atque a fortissimo, must this be true of that greatest of all earthly institutions which we call the State-that mighty agent claiming to exercise a sovereign power, a power of life and death, a penal power, a right defining and a right creating power, a relation determining power, above all, an educating power, over successive generations embracing millions and millions of immortal human beings. If there is any truth that may be said to be practically as well as theoretically self-evident, then is it certain that what we call politics must be religious or irreligious, christian or anti-christian. Every plant which my Father in Heaven hath not planted shall be rooted up." If we trust that we are of God's planting, that trust should be avowed. The position of indifference, even if it could be kept from becoming hostility, must be the most odious, as it is the most insulting, to one who claims supreme homage from all lower powers assuming to exercise his prerogative of "establishing justice "upon the earth. THE STATE MUST DECLARE ITSELF. 66 Some stand must be taken somewhere. Some position must be assumed, be it ever so general, and that position must be one of friendship or of hostility. There are things, and some of them justly deemed as of high social value, towards which the state may maintain an attitude of indifference. But it cannot be indifferent to Christianity. To put it on a par with atheism, or any form of heathenism, is such a denial of its uncompromising claims as amounts to direct antagonism. Christianity is a power in respect to which every other powerevery social power at least-must declare itself. We venture to incur the charge of repetition here, because it is the central point in this discussion: The state cannot be neutral, it must be religious or irreligious. So it was held by the most eminent of the ancient legislators before. the birth of Christ. An irre |