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.

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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

ligious community, one that did not acknowledge the gods, or something divine as the ground of civil obligation, was a most unnatural, as well as impossible monster. The old Testament everywhere speaks the same language. Since the coming of the Saviour, the ground has been still farther narrowed. modern state must be Christian or anti-Christian.

Every

Neutrality is impossible. Let this be once seen-as it must be seen by every one who reads human nature in the light of the Scriptures, and for all serious men the argument is at an end. It is the point which Dr. Spear, and Mr. Beecher, and other professedly religious advocates of State indifference never meet. Evangelical and orthodox as they claim to be, they seem to have far less comprehension of its importance, or of the demands of Christianity as a social power, than others who have been regarded as belonging to a more liberal or free-thinking school. They are fertile in stating all manner of popular objections, some of them clothed in the language of the old scoffing infidelity, and others of their own invention. They abound in ad captandum questions accommodated to the most unreasoning popular prejudices. What Christianity? they ask. Shall it be Mormon Christianity? Shall it be General Grant's Christianity? Shall it be the Christianity of the Congress, or of the Common Council of New York? And then what will the Jews say, or what becomes of the veto power of those among us who believe in no God? This is very easy work; but the deep question we have stated? This they never grapple with. They evade it in every possible way, whilst the whole tendency of this mere surface treatment is to blind men to its incalculable importance. Settle this first, and it may be seen that there is some rational, liberal, and yet Christian mode of dealing with these minor difficulties, or that there is a theology, a Christianity, that may be predicated of the state, defining its relations to God and Christ, without interfering with any dogmas, that may be regarded as belonging to denominational creeds. Let it be understood that the state must be religious or irreligious, theistical or atheistical, Christian or anti-Christian, and it may be found, practically, that questions and objections so confidently pressed as unanswerable are far less formidable than they appear to be when seen through the magnifying and distorting medium of a flippant popular declamation. If there is no avoiding this issue, if the tendency must be in the one direction or the other, then for all religious men, for all thinking men, the main question is put at rest. All that remains is the most rational adjustment that can be devised for preserving the great truth in harmony with the largest measure of individual religious liberty.

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION ON OTHER MATTERS NOT REGARDED AS A BAR TO STATE ACTION.

The common mode of reasoning on this subject presents a strange anomaly. It must either adopt a rule in respect to religion, which it applies to nothing else -making a distinction for which no reason can be given or it must base itself upon the utterly untenable and impracticable position that nothing is to be favored, or disfavored, in the general action of the state, in respect to which there is the least difference of opinion. How then can the state educate at all, even though its education be ever so secular, as it is called? It is impossible to keep down this question. The exclusion of religion from our common schools, the casting out of the Bible, will go but a very little way towards putting it at rest. It will rather have the effect of bringing it up in still more rancorous and unmanageable forms. Carry out the absurd principle, and the state can have no distinguishing character whatever. There can be nothing predominant, no such thing as a mind

of the state, exhibited in its constitution, legislation and jurisprudence. What right has any man, claiming to think at all, to confine these questions to the provinces of Religion and Morality? Surely it cannot be on the ground that they have nothing to do with the social well being. Men differ on other questions of general interest, many of which as it could be shown, are inseparable from the higher matters thus irrationally tabooed. They differ as to the very foundation of government: they are not universally agreed in respect to the origin, ground and nature of human right. Why not ask with just as much pertinency, What Republicanism? For here, too, there are vast differences of opinion, as well as on the general and minor questions of religion. Politics must be taught in our schools, so say all; our children must be early imbued with American ideas; they must be made familiar with the peculiar principles of our peculiar political system. But here the questions come again, and they are just as pertinent as Dr. Spear's famous inquiry, What religion? Why may it not be asked by any one who choses to exercise a veto power; what doctrine of nationality shall our children learn, what theory of state right, what system of political economy, what ethics of marriage and the domestic relations, what ideas of property, what notions in respect to that most important matter of the public credit and responsibility? What religion? says Dr. Spear in contending for education without religion. But may it not be asked with equal justice; What education? Are there not also different opinions here, and shall any man or any set of men, however few their number, and however worthless their opinion, have a veto power in respect to any course of instruction that may not be in harmony with their crude ideas, however it may be demanded by the predominant thinking of the Community? There is no end of such questions; and yet we must have some general social character, in other words, some national mind in respect to all these matters. Whatever difference of opinion may exist, still in respect to all of them may it be said, that the state must be for or against. Neutrality is impossible. If this be so in regard to the lesser re sponsibilities, how fearfully important does the alternative become when stated in regard to that higher concern, which while transcending all mere earthly interests, is ever inseparable from them. Is neutrality possible? It is the pivotal question, we say again; every thing turns upon it, and yet it is one which the writers chiefly referred to, and who gain credit by appearing in the character of religious men, will never look in the face. They have never bestowed a paragraph upon it, although the right solution of it is of such primal moment. true answer scatters to the winds all their popular appeals, all their ad captandum sophistry about religious liberty, and equal rights. Universal toleration, the allowing every opinion, however much it may be out of harmony with the predominant social mind, to gain such weight and credence to itself, as it may intrinsically deserve, or as the talents of its advocates may secure this is religious liberty in its widest and most elastic definition. But this, it seems, is not enough. It claims a right beyond this. The state shall favor me, it says, or it shall favor nothing. The negative character it may sometimes assume does not alter the case in the least. It only makes it the more positive, the more bitter and intolerant in its assertion. Stated in the plainest and most undeniable terms, this vaunted “religious liberty" is nothing more nor less than an absolute claim of right on the part of any set of men, however few their numbers, however low their intelligence, however false their principles, however debased and sensual their lives, to veto any thing and every thing which the moral heart of the nation demands as conservative of its highest well being. All should come to

The

their level, nothing should rise above it. We defy any man to show why this is not applicable to education in all its departments, as well as to morality and religion. This veto power may demand the expulsion of the classics, or of any system of moral philosophy, so far as they are taught in any school patronized by the state, on the same ground that it clamors for the exclusion of the Gospels or of any literature that has ever been deemed sacred. Its course is ever downward, and there is no consistent stopping-place, except at that lowest point which sets itself up as the limiting measure for all. Blind indeed must he be who fancies that religion alone will suffer in this process. It foretokens the doom of every thing that is highest and noblest in human culture.

We have fairly stated this veto doctrine. It is a fearful position for men to take, especially religious men, theological men, who are supposed to know something by experience as well as study, of the depths to which these questions descend in the very roots of our humanity, so fearfully compounded of the animal and the divine. If indifference here, or the assumption of indifference, be in truth a most positive and even deadly hostility; if this law of our being must show itself in the social as well as in the individual character; if the State must favor religion or irreligion; if this conclusion is involved in one of the most emphatic declarations of the Saviour; if it results inevitably from the nature of man as a rational, moral and immortal agent, then where are they? On which side of this unavoidable conflict are they ultimately to be counted? If they maintain that we are in some way to be regarded as an exception to this law, or that the woes denounced upon nations that refuse to acknowledge God have no application to democratic or republican governments, on them lies the burden of proof. All history, as well as all revelation, is certainly against them. Constitutions, written or unwritten, cannot change the nature of man. Heaven and earth may pass away, but the word of Christ shall stand. "That which is not for me is against me;" every human agent that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad-tends inevitably to evil and ruin. No assumed collective character can modify or merge the awful responsibility.

ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE-NEW DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN UNBELIEF.

This central question cannot much longer be evaded. The argument is rapidly passing from the region of theory to that of sharp experience. An atheistical party is rising in this country. Religious dogmas, it is said, are changing their character. Whether that be so or not, it is certainly true that the assaults of unbelief are assuming strange and monstrous forms. We call it the atheistical party because it goes very far beyond any thing that has heretofore been called infidel or deistical. It has passed beyond questions of orthodoxy, once so called, beyond difficulties in relation to the Bible and its inspiration, it assails the very being of a God, in any sense that possesses the least moral or religious value. It used to be a question we have sometimes heard debated, whether there ever really was, or could be such a thing as an atheist. Lord Cherburg denied it; the old English infidels all denied it; even Voltaire held such a belief to be a rational impossibility. But it is a question no longer. There is an increasing number of men in England, Germany, France, and America who fearlessly avow the name.

There is a still greater number, fast treading in their steps, who evasively deify nature, but to the utter exclusion of prayer, of providence, of worship, of every thing, in short, that associates with itself the ideas of reverence and responsibility. It can no longer be disguised that atheism, blank atheism, with

slits desolating horrors, is becoming the characteristic of modern unbelief. It is fast sweeping all the more timid forms of doubt into its bottomless abyss of darkness. In one sense we have reason to rejoice in this law of "development.” It clears up debatable ground; it presents us with sharp and decisive issues; it is fast dispelling the fog that hangs over this question of neutrality; it is compelling men to take sides whilst carrying many along with it into perdition; it is driving back to serious religion other souls who see the middle grounds swept away, and who cannot bear to take the awful leap. Hence, we say God be thanked for this ordination of moral causes, as sure as any law of the physical world, that error must develop itself; it cannot stand still; it must reveal its hideousness. The old Christian belief once abandoned, it cannot stop short of atheism; and to this all ungodliness is now fast hastening. Natural theology, as it was once called, is left far behind. Nature, instead of being a lower subordinate to a higher sphere of being, and finding its only meaning in such relation, is all that is. Force and motion are the only realities. Thought, ides, soul, so far as there are any phenomena corresponding to those old words, are only modifications of matter All things high and holy, all things that would inspire reverence, are gone. Human dignity is gone, human rights, so called, Every idea of absolute right disAll Christian denominations, all

are merged in the universal sea of force. appears with the ideas of God and spirit. hades of religious belief, all who would maintain that there is any thing in man above the physical, are called upon to unite against the soul-denying, God-denying monster-to hold it for what it truly is, hostis Dei atque humani generis, "the enemy of God and of the human race. It has changed its position. It no longer asks for tolerance simply. It no longer says, "Let us alone, Jesus of Nazareth, what have we to do with thee?" It has become a perarbed and uneasy spirit, a most fierce and aggressive spirit. It would seem that the Infinite Wisdom has left it to itself to the most full development of evil nature-in order to prove beyond all question a truth most important for man to know, that non-religion is irreligion, and that this, instead of being the placid negation it once claimed to be, is a most positive and implacable power. In a word, it has exchanged the bland philosophic indifference, sssumed as a characteristic of former enemies of Christianity, for a bigoted intolerance, that will brook nothing which reminds them of God, and judgment, and immortality, or any thing, in short, that would prove man to have something essentially higher than the beasts from whom they say he has been developed. Whatever religionists may be disposed to do, hese men will not sfer the State to be neutral. They know, too, that it is impossible. In this respect they are better theologians than Dr. Spear; they are sharper reasers; or rather their intuitive perception of consequences, their keen Satanic instinct, is a more unerring thing than all his syllogistic logic.

The untiring spirit of hostility with which they assail every usage or observance, once held sacred, shows them to be fully aware that this pretence of state indifference is simply a favoring of their side and they are determined to make the most of it.

NO REAL RECIPROCITY, AND, THEREFORE, THE ALLEGED NEUTRALITY A DECEPTION.

Dr.

Bellows contents himself, at last, with the ejection of the Bible from our

common schools, though acknowledging how much he was shocked at the first mention of the proposition. We honor him for his candor. We have no doubt