AMERICA. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D. 
 
P a mpUetC*tt^ 
 
 Puke !>iv^ty School 
 
CHURCH AND STATE IN AMERICA. 
 
 A DISCOURSE 
 
 GIVEN AT WASHINGTON, D. ('.. AT THE INSTALLA- 
 TION OF 
 
 REV. FREDERIC HINCKLEY, 
 
 AS PASTOR OF THE 
 
 UNITARIAN CHURCH, 
 
 JANUARY 25, 1871, 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D. 
 
 REPEATED 
 
 IX ALL SOULS' CHURCH, NEW YORK, 
 January 29, 1871. 
 
 PUBLISHED H3"3T BEQUEST. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. : 
 
 PHILP & SOLOMONS, 
 1871. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/churchstateiname01bell 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 " Render, therefore, unto Csesar the things which are Coesar's, and unto God the 
 things that are God's."— Matt. 22 : 21. 
 
 " My kingdom is not of this world ; if my kingdom were of this world, then 
 would my servants fight."— John 18 : 36. 
 
 " Hast thou faith ? Have it to thyself before God."'— Rom. 15 : 22. 
 
 We are assembled to install a Christian minister over a 
 church representing a small and unpopular sect of Christian 
 believers in the capita! of the nation. Towards this city, 
 because of its political headship and representative character, 
 all the various religious denominations of the land are now 
 turning their thoughts and directing their plans, seeking to 
 establish here missionary churches, and to obtain whatever 
 moral influence they can in favor of their own faith and polity, 
 by publishing through able ministers, in attractive and commodi- 
 ous temples, the religious convictions and opinions they enter- 
 tain. It is an honorable and useful rivalry in service to the 
 truth in which these various religious bodies are engaged, and 
 the Unitarian denomination is, I trust, preparing to enter the 
 lists in vindication and propagation of the primitive faith of 
 the Apostles, which it claims to possess. Yet it is not the pecu- 
 liar views of the Unitarians that I propose to define or defend on 
 this occasion. There is another topic, to which recent events of 
 world-wide interest have drawn general attention, which, it 
 seems to me, no place and no occasion could offer a fairer or 
 fitter opportunity to discuss than the present — I mean the 
 relations of Church and State in this country. 
 
 We are standing here, in the District of Columbia, upon 
 purely national ground — under the sole dominion and protec- 
 tion of the General Government, with the Constitution of the 
 United States — without the intervention of State laws — as the 
 direct guide and guarantee of all political rights and duties. 
 To this ground, in view of the national Capitol, and under the 
 
4 
 
 protection of Congress, may come Jews and Christians, believ- 
 ers and infidels, orthodox and heterodox, great sects and small 
 sects, Roman Catholics and Protestants, Methodists and Uni- 
 versalists, Episcopalians and Quakers, Trinitarians and Unita- 
 rians, Theists, Polytheists, Atheists, Pagans, Mahommedans, Chi- 
 nese worshippers of their ancestors, Indian worshippers of the 
 Great Spirit — claiming the equal right to worship, or not to 
 worship, according to the dictates of their own consciences, the 
 customs of their parents, or the caprices of their own ignorance — 
 to propagate and defend their opinions, to enjoy unmolested 
 their own views, and to share equally the protection of the 
 national law. It is an anomalous and extraordinary state of 
 things. But, if you turn from the door of the Catholic cathe- 
 dral, the Protestant Episcopal church, the Methodist chapel, 
 the Friends' meeting-house, the Jewish synagogue, towards the 
 Capitol, you see at once the necessity and the blessedness of the 
 liberty of conscience and the freedom of worship guaranteed by 
 the Constitution. For there, beneath that dome, over which 
 the Goddess of Liberty presides, sit the representatives of more 
 than forty States and Territories, stretching over twenty-five 
 degrees of latitude and fifty-eight degrees of longitude — States 
 originally settled, some by Puritans and some by Cavaliers ; 
 now by Roman Catholics and now by Quakers ; here by Jews 
 and there, in part, by Pagans ; and since peopled and occupied 
 by representatives of the most divers shades of Christian and 
 non-Christian opinion. 
 
 Upon what principle, except that of an essential and perma- 
 nent divorce of Church and State, could a political union be 
 established and maintained in a country like ours ? What 
 form of Christianity could have been established by law as the 
 national faith or church, under the special protection and man- 
 agement of the civil power, either at the origin or at any later 
 period of the Federal Union ? What terrible complications 
 and antagonisms would have vexed our politics, if questions of 
 religious faith and ecclesiastical polity had been allowed to enter 
 into the Constitution, and become subjects of political regula- 
 tion? There is not a country on the globe that could so illy 
 
0 
 
 bear union between Church and State as this. In the oldest 
 States of Europe, dating back to periods when the people had 
 no share either in the government of State or Church, the union 
 between them, most natural and most necessary in imperial or 
 aristocratic eras of history, has yet caused at all times trouble, 
 and at some times ruin, and is now one of the chief sources of 
 anxiety in every highly-civilized monarchical country. England 
 is cautiously unbuckling one by one the straps that harness the 
 Church and the State together. France is dissolving under the 
 despotism which this union had alone rendered possible, and 
 Church and State are engulfed in the whirlpool which is finally 
 produced everywhere when national ideas and national institu- 
 tions are found in conscious or unconscious conflict. Italy has 
 just entered Rome — Rome, so many times and in so many dif- 
 ferent spheres mistress of the world — in imperial power, in mili- 
 tary sway, in jurisprudence, in arts, in religion — entered it to 
 discrown the Pope as a temporal ruler, and dismiss him as a 
 political sovereign from her capital, by the will of Roman Catho- 
 lics themselves, while he stays the unmolested and beloved 
 spiritual head of the vast church of w T hich he has so long been 
 the pure and revered pontiff. 
 
 Government, it must be remembered, is such a profound ne- 
 cessity of society, and especially of national society, that prac- 
 tically it has and can have no fixed conditions and no unchang- 
 ing forms. Every form of government has at some time been 
 justified by necessity. The tyrants of Athens and Rome ruled 
 by divine right, when Athens and Rome, in a state of military 
 anarchy, deserved and admitted no better governors. 
 
 There is a science of politics, and happy is the nation where 
 the purest theory of the State can be incarnated in public law 
 and custom. But nations are not the birth of theories, but of 
 circumstances and providential necessities. Statesmanship, or 
 the art of politics, must not be confounded with the science of 
 politics. Statesmen who make or change constitutions are bound 
 to make or change them to suit the wants and possibilities of 
 the people for whom they exist. They cannot wisely or profit- 
 ably force upon a nation a government which on scientific prin- 
 
6 
 
 ciples may be better or best ; they must take that form of gov- 
 ernment which the nation can bear or support. Doubtless po- 
 litical science would always divorce the Church and the State ; 
 but living history has not in the past forbidden the banns, nor 
 will statesmanship yet justify the separation in all cases. It is 
 impossible to doubt that for long ages the union of Church and 
 State was absolutely necessary and beneficial, and the averter of 
 more evils than it caused. Very likely holy Russia finds ample 
 justification in the union she so jealously maintains between the 
 Church and the State ; but the fact is a curious commentary on 
 the peculiar sympathy which politicians assume to exist between 
 two nations, America and Russia, which, in respect of auto- 
 cratic and democratic rule, popular superstition and popular 
 enlightenment, are at opposite poles. 
 
 Happily our founders were compelled, and by a blessed neces- 
 sity, to introduce at the very beginning a truly scientific prin- 
 ciple into the foundations of the national law and life. They 
 declared a complete and perpetual divorce between the Church 
 and the State. They were learned statesmen, and wise and 
 careful students of history. They recalled freshly all the fear- 
 ful religious wars of Germany, France, and England, and knew 
 how the succession wars in England, and the struggles of Hu- 
 guenot and Catholic princes in France and the Netherlands had 
 deluged both lands in blood, and kept the crown swimming in 
 gore. They most wisely, most blessedly, and with a wisdom 
 even greater than they knew, determined that religion and poli- 
 tics in this country should have no other connection than in the 
 private hearts of the people. The State should know no Church. 
 It should respect and honor religion, and protect the rights and 
 worship of all religionists; but it should support, it should 
 favor, no branch of Christian faith, as against others; nor Chris- 
 tianity as against other religious. 
 
 In some other countries, thii might be, nay would be a peri- 
 lous experiment. Religion is a great public interest. The well- 
 being, the order, and security of the nation depends upon its 
 support and nourishment. It must not be, it cannot be suffered 
 to fall into neglect, If our founders had said or thought that 
 
7 
 
 the State derived no necessary support from the religion of the 
 people, and that it was a matter of no consequence to statesmen, 
 whether public worship and religious teaching were maintained 
 or not, they would have shown themselves blind leaders of the 
 blind. No ! They saw and felt that in our country, the people 
 were intelligent and thoughtful enough to maintain religion in 
 ways suited to their own convictions and wants, by voluntary 
 or local support ; that the Church did not need, nay would not 
 endure, connection with, or support from the State ; nor the State 
 interference or direction from the Church. They felt in advance, 
 just what experience has fully shown, that religion would flourish 
 best in America in perfect freedom, and that its influence upon 
 the public weal — economically, morally, politically — would be 
 vastly greater in its indirect or informal character, than through 
 any direct or established union, which in any one, or any ten 
 forms, it might have with the State. And so, providentially and 
 benignantly the State and the Church were separated in America. 
 It is still a subject of curious interest and inquiry among the 
 noblest thinkers and observers in England by what impulses 
 and methods the voluntary system in religion works in America. 
 No amount of written or second-hand testimony to its success, 
 ever seems quite to satisfy them. The experience is so novel 
 and contrary to all their past usage and present custom that it 
 baffles their imagination. AYe, on the contrary, have become 
 so used to it, that we do not even appreciate its difficulties else- 
 where, its blessing at home, or the necessity of watching against 
 any encroachments upon it in our own land. 
 
 The very words " Church and State" have an un-American 
 meaning, and correspond only in a figurative way to what we 
 really mean when Ave speak, as Americans, of the civil and 
 religious interests of the nation. 
 
 When Louis XIV said, "The State — it is 1" he simply 
 epitomized the long-prevailing, and, perhaps, long-needed 
 opinion existing among European and Asiatic peoples, that 
 nations live in their rulers — an idea which is only a little 
 enlarged when nations are supposed to live in their govern- 
 ments. Still, to a greater or less degree in older nations, the 
 
8 
 
 national life, honor, and liberty, are loooked for as existing in 
 and as secured and protected mainly by the national government. 
 We do not receive this idea in America. The Government, in 
 certain respects only, represents the nation ; does certain things 
 for the nation ; speaks for it with foreign powers ; makes war 
 and peace; forms treaties ; imposes taxes; and regulates coins 
 and currency. 
 
 We are, indeed, greatly concerned for its purity, honor, 
 energy, and wisdom. But we deliberately confine its sphere to 
 the fewest possible things, and we admit its interference with 
 nothing that can exist without its aid. It is a machine, neces- 
 sarily running on human hearts and wills, but a machine after 
 all. It represents, but is not the nation. It often does things for 
 which we are legally responsible — for which we are not morally 
 responsible. If our business agent steals we must pay, but we 
 need not own ourselves thieves. Because the Government has 
 no religion as a government, it does not follow that the Nation 
 has no religion, much less that the governors, in their private 
 character, have none. The nation has so much religion that it 
 will not allow its political agent or servant, the Government, to 
 charge itself with its religious affairs. It attends to its religion 
 in other ways, and simply instructs its Government to leave 
 faith and worship to the people to manage it after their own 
 several fashions. 
 
 Historically considered, and as a matter of fact, there can be 
 no question of two things ; that the United States of America 
 is, 1. A Christian Nation; and, 2. A Protestant Nation ; that 
 is to say, the overwhelming faith of the people is both Christian 
 and Protestant. But the Government, as a Government, is 
 neither Christian nor Protestant, except by an unconscious and 
 inevitable influence of custom, and usage, and feeling, indirectly 
 brought to bear upon it ; and this simply because the Govern- 
 ment is not a religious agent or representative. 
 
 Nor is the Constitution intended to be, nor is it, a full expres- 
 sion of the national life. It is properly confined to what con- 
 cerns the political principles and interests of the nation. We 
 found, in our recent war, how much greater and stronger the 
 
9 
 
 national life was than the Constitution. Excepting that all 
 constitutions profess justice, truth, and honor, there is neither 
 an avowedly moral nor a purposely religious character to the 
 Constitution. The moral sense of the nation, ever improving 
 and increasing, cannot be shut up in a fixed document; the 
 religious faith of the nation, continually changing and heighten- 
 ing, cannot be stereotyped in a national creed. The Constitu- 
 tion confines itself to guaranteeing religion, liberty, and the 
 equality of all religious confessions before the law. It makes 
 no declaration of faith, theistic or otherwise ; it denies no creed, 
 Christian or non-christian ; and this not from indifference to re- 
 ligion, or indifference to morality, or indifference to Christianity 
 in the nation, but from respect to the moral and religious feel- 
 ings and rights of the nation. Religion is, and always has been, 
 too deep and general an interest in America, too earnestly dis- 
 puted, too zealously investigated, too variously because too 
 thoughtfully considered; to allow of any interference with it 
 from the State. Were the chief interest in religion resident in 
 the governing class, in politicians or public officers, or were re- 
 ligion valued in this country as it has been in many others, chiefly 
 as an instrument of political power and management of the masses, 
 its appearance in the Constitution might be justified. Its non- 
 appearance there is the greatest testimony any nation ever 
 offered to its existence where it belongs, in the minds and hearts 
 and lives of the people ; in the national heart, and not in the 
 government head or the political mouth. 
 
 It is curious enough that, just at the moment when vigorous 
 operations are springing up for the purpose of engrafting theo- 
 logical dogmas upon the Constitution, as though the nation 
 were Godless or Christless, because God and Christ do not 
 appear in the Constitution, the older nations should be sending 
 deputations of anxious and earnest Christians to America to 
 learn what the cause and methods of our warmer and more 
 popular religious and Christian life are. In other nations, where 
 God and Christ appear in State constitutions in elaborate arti- 
 cles of faith upheld by public law ; where bishops, as bishops, 
 sit in the Ifouse of Lords, or are prime ministers; where reli- 
 2 
 
10 
 
 gion is established and supported by the State, the Christian 
 faith languishes, is violently attacked and denied by the think- 
 ing class, loses the sympathy and support of the working people, 
 and presents an anxious problem to its true friends. In the 
 freedom here allowed to religion, in the blessed emulation of 
 .the various churches and denominations, in the unchecked right 
 of free inquiry, in the absolute dissociation of Church and State, 
 Christianity finds her free development, adapts her forms to 
 the needs and possibilities of all schools of experience and all 
 classes of society, becomes an object of general or universal 
 interest and puts forth new powers, and every day gets a stronger 
 hold of the national heart. Other forms of faith, derived from 
 less advanced stages of human society, but to which blood and 
 race and memory give a sacred character, here have equal 
 rights with Christianity before the law and the Constitution. 
 But is it because the nation, in its heart, recognizes the moral 
 equality, or proper rivalry of Judaism, Mormonism, Paganism, 
 Mohammedanism with Christianity, as religions equally divine, 
 authoritative, and worthy of the people's attention and support? 
 Or is it simply because the nation, overwhelmingly Christian in 
 its heart, has the wise magnanimity, as well as the high states- 
 manship, to declare and to feel that political rights shall not 
 depend on religious preferences cr theological majorities; shall 
 not be denied to Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Infidel ; that Chris- 
 tianity shall not owe its life to the patronage of the Constitu- 
 tion, nor religious truth be at the mercy of acts of Congress ? 
 Is it not because we are a Christian nation that we are a tole- 
 rant Government ? Is it not the Christianity in the heart of 
 the people that makes them not only fearless of what Polythe- 
 ism, Paganism, Judaism, or any other imperfect or partial 
 religion, can do in a free nation, with a free press and a free 
 Jife, but even disposed to rejoice that those who are not able to 
 share the high and blessed privileges of their Christian faith, 
 are permitted to enjoy the full privileges of their political free- 
 dom, among the chiefest of which is the right of not being 
 constrained in their religious opinions, or disfavored in con- 
 science by the law ? 
 
n 
 
 When, then, vigorous and earnest men of high and pure 
 character constitute themselves, as they are now doing, into pub- 
 lic societies, to agitate for the introduction into the Constitution 
 of the United States of declarations of faith in "Almighty 
 God, as the source of all authority and power in civil govern- 
 ment, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the Nations, 
 and His revealed will of supreme authority, in order to consti- 
 tute a Christian government" — while respecting both the mo- 
 tives and the perfect right of such excellent persons to agitate 
 the question, it is highly important to protest at the very outset 
 of these movements against the retrograde policy, the perilous 
 consequences, the anti- American character of such a measure. 
 The poly-theism, the tri-theism, the atheism in America are 
 fair and proper subjects of criticism, of reprobation, of discus- 
 sion and dissuasion in the press, the pulpit, or the platform, and 
 in literature. Christians may properly unite to defend their 
 own faith, and to discourage and disprove every faith that op- 
 poses or denies it; but one field they cannot enter without undo- 
 ing the greatest work our fathers accomplished. They cannot 
 erect their dogmatic fortresses or plant their theological batteries 
 within the Constitution ! What is proposed in the amend men£ ? 
 already endorsed by several large conventions — already, if I am 
 not mistaken, brought in an independent form by a Senator 
 from Illinois before the Senate, is to commit the Constitution off 
 the United States to these three points: 1. That all civil gov L 
 ernment owes all its authority and power to Almighty God. 
 
 2. That the Lord Jesus Christ is the Ruler among the Nations. 
 
 3. That His revealed will, the Bible, is of supreme authority in 
 a Christian government. 
 
 There is a sense in which these propositions are true ; and 
 they are becoming propositions for Christian churches and con- 
 ventions to entertain. But if they were absolutely true to all 
 Christians, as they are only so to a great majority, they are wholly 
 out of place in the Constitution. They overlook the fact that 
 the Constitution is not a religious or theological or even Chris- 
 tian charter, but belongs to Jew and Gentile, Christian and Pa- 
 gan alike. 
 
12 
 
 Each of these articles directly contradicts the whole spirit 
 and intention of the national will, as expressed in its existing 
 Constitution. The Government of this country derives its 
 power and authority from the people of the nation, and in no 
 proper political sense from any other source. Our governors 
 are not sacred persons, governors by divine right, like Old World 
 kings. The Government is not an altar, but a machine — not a 
 master, but a servant. We are not under a theocracy, like the 
 ancient Jews. Christians, individually, or even collectively, 
 recognize the fact that civil government is an ordinance of God 
 for them, and, like everything else valuable and true, has a re- 
 ligious obligation ; but the power and authority of civil govern- 
 ment does not in the least degree depend upon the recognition 
 or acknowledgment of this fact, any more than the sun's heat 
 depends on our theory of it. Nobody can be required by the 
 civil power to obey the laws of the land as laws of Almighty 
 God ; nor can anybody excuse himself from obeying them on 
 the ground that he does not recognize any such authority or 
 power as Almighty God. In seeming to strengthen we really 
 weaken the civil power by calling in the power and authority 
 of Almighty God as its political foundation, for we acquit those 
 who deny this authority from an obligation to obey it. Leave 
 the civil power where it rests, on its necessity, its utility, and 
 the will of the people, and let the Christian sentiment which 
 recognizes God in the "powers that be' 7 come in to the voluntary 
 support of civil authority, without implying that those who are 
 not Christians and not theists are in any way released, and you 
 get all the advantages without any of the disadvantages of the 
 union of civil and religious authority. 
 
 But the first is not half as dangerous and inadmissible as the 
 second clause of the proposed amendment, " That the Lord Jesus 
 Christ is the ruler among the nations. 77 Here is a positive sec- 
 tarian dogma of a certain immense majority, yet still only a 
 part, of the Christian Church, which it is proposed to lodge per- 
 manently in the Constitution. However respectable, however 
 excellent, however numerous the believers in this dogma may 
 be— however large their present majority- — it is a well-known 
 
13 
 
 fact that in no sense in which they mean to use it is this propo- 
 sition received by some of the most scholarly, thoughtful, intel- 
 ligent and blameless Christian sects. What must the Unita- 
 rians, the Universalists, the Christians, the Hicksite Friends, 
 the Free Religionists, the Jews say to the proposition that the 
 Lord Jesus Christ is the ruler among the nations ? They none 
 of them believe that Jesus Christ and Almighty God are the 
 same person. They all believe that Almighty God is the ruler 
 among the nations, and not Jesus Christ. Nay, it is because 
 they do not believe that Jesus Christ is God, or the ruler among 
 the nations, that Trinitarian Christians wish to get this decla- 
 ration of their own opposite faith put by a majority vote into 
 the Constitution. It is a supposably conscientious attempt on 
 their part to enlist the Constitution in the service of theological 
 faith. Seeing the hopelessness of putting down these sects by 
 argument, they must be discountenanced and disfranchised by 
 the civil power ! Will the weaker and feebler sects of Chris- 
 tians in this couutry look on indifferently or inactively, and see 
 this " Holy alliance" of the stronger sects conspiring to get the 
 theological opinions of a majority engrafted upon the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States ; and will the untheological, unsecta- 
 rian people of this country, who care little for the distinctions 
 in ecclesiastical or dogmatic Christianity, allow this keg of theo- 
 logical gunpowder, which the lovers of creeds are so innocently 
 wheeling about the country, to be set down upon the very cor- 
 ner-stone of their civic temple ? I warn them, I warn the 
 country, that such an amendment would plant the seeds of dis- 
 union and religious war in this nation, and that they wholly 
 misunderstand the temper and character of the American people 
 in expecting to get their consent to so perilous an abuse of theo- 
 logical influence, so open an attack upon the sacred divorce be- 
 tween Church and State. 
 
 But the third proposition is, because more definite, still more 
 objectionable. It settles peremptorily two questions for the 
 nation, that the nation means to keep open and out of politics : 
 1st. That our Government (not the nation) is a Christian Gov- 
 
14 
 
 ernment; and 2d. That the Bible is Christ's and therefore God's 
 revealed will, and is of supreme authority. 
 
 First. That this is a Christian nation, but one refusing to consider 
 or acknowledge or disclaim any theological or religious charac- 
 ter in its government, has already been sufficiently set forth. 
 For Christian reasons and in the interest of Christianity, the 
 Christian wisdom and faith in the hearts of American citizens 
 has warned them to keep religious, theological, and ecclesiasti- 
 cal questions wholly out of their civil constitution and their 
 politics. They expect to be, they claim to be, a more and not less 
 Christian nation on this account, and they will not consent to 
 needlessly wound or discourage the civil loyalty of Jews, pagans, 
 infidels, or non-christian men, by setting up a target for theo- 
 logical hostility in a Constitution which belongs to the whole 
 American people, and ultimately to all mankind. Second. That 
 the Bible, meaning King James' version, is God's or Christ's 
 revealed will and of Supreme authority is disputed by Roman 
 Catholics, by Jews so far as its most precious part, the New Testa- 
 ment, is concerned ; by learned men in Christendom who are set- 
 tling and unsettling its canon every clay ; by all consistent believ- 
 ers in the right of private judgment — who must come back to 
 reason and conscience as the final authority at last ; while the 
 nature of inspiration itself is thoroughly undetermined among 
 competent authorities. Yet the plain object of this amend- 
 ment is to put the Bible in its old character, as a literally and 
 plenarily inspired book into the Constitution, and through it, 
 to keep it in the public schools against the wishes and protest 
 of the Roman Catholics or of unbelievers. In short, a more or 
 less numerous class of American Christians, are, if they have 
 their way., about settling for the whole country its questions and 
 doubts upon some of the most difficult, disputed, and anxious 
 subjects of theological opinion. They propose to settle just 
 what Christianity is, just who Christ was, just what the Bible 
 is, just what the relations are of the civil and the religious 
 powers in this, and all countries. The nation will object to this 
 claim to omniscience and omnipotence. It will not deputize to 
 
15 
 
 any self-called convention, a duty so serious, an office so need- 
 less, a purpose so perilous as this. 
 
 I have said that historically considered, or as a matter of 
 present fact, this is a Christian nation, Christian in its origin, 
 temper, prevailing faith and reputation ; and that the absence of 
 any declaration of its theistic and Christian faith in its political 
 constitution does not touch the fact of its Christianity, nor 
 bring it into doubt in other nations, nor render it questionable 
 at home. We refuse to bring theological and religious questions, 
 because of their importance and the immense jealousies they 
 arouse, and because of their nature as questions between the 
 individual soul and its maker, into the political charter, which 
 is designed to express the common and equal rights of all citi- 
 zens. The Government, meanwhile, is neither Christian nor 
 non-christian, simply because the nation in its Christian strength 
 and sense of justice and charity, declines to make the political 
 platform, the place where it announces its creed; the government, 
 its religious agent or representative. It has learned from ex- 
 perience in other countries, the dangers of the union between 
 Church and State, religion and politics. For its Christian faith 
 and character, the nation refers the world to its religious statis- 
 tics, its newspapers, its charities, its general life, its literature, 
 its homes, and its temples of worship. It would be amusing, 
 if it were not mournful, to observe that among the inducements 
 to introduce the theistic and theological amendment to which I 
 have referred into our constitution, the excellent president of 
 the recent convention. March, 1870, at Pittsburg, called the 
 attention of the body to the fact that the Southern States, when 
 in active rebellion, and in arms against the States, did introduce 
 into their new constitution this very recognition of God, which 
 he desires us to follow them in introducing to our own Consti- 
 tution. At the very moment they were treasonably violating the 
 law of the Gocl they professed to recognize as the head of the 
 State of which they were citizens, they were ostentatiously put- 
 ting his name and political sovereignty into their fundamental 
 law, and making Him the sponsor of their rebellion! Can we 
 not very clearly distinguish between that religion which cries 
 
16 
 
 Lord, Lord, in political and civil documents, and that religion, 
 which without State profession, does the thing which he says in 
 its national or common life ? 
 
 But this is not only historically, and as a matter of fact, a 
 Christian nation — it is also, in the same sense, a Protestant 
 nation. The overwhelming majority of the people are Protestant 
 in name, and temper, and purpose. But surely the Government 
 is not a Protestant Government. A Roman Catholic, a Jew, is 
 eligible to the office of President, or Chief Justice, Senator, or 
 Representative. Did Mr. Taney's position, as Chief Justice, 
 Catholic as he was, compromise the Protestant character of this 
 nation ? Certainly not ; it showed plainly its Protestant spirit 
 and character. Had this been a Roman Catholic nation or Gov- 
 ernment no Protestant could have been made Chief Justice, 
 much less President. We have had several Unitarian Presi- 
 dents, the Adamses, Mr. Fillmore, by profession, perhaps Jef- 
 ferson and Lincoln, in fact ; but does that prove that this 
 nation, as a matter of fact, is not still not only Protestant, but 
 also Trinitarian and " orthodox " in it's dogmatic faith ? Cer- 
 tainly not. The nation does not look for theological qualifica- 
 tions, or even forms of religious conviction, in its political 
 agents. It ought to look, and would that it looked more, to 
 moral character and political ability. But God avert the day 
 when it shall inquire into the theological opinions of its candi- 
 dates for political office ! 
 
 It is the vast importance of keeping the political and the re- 
 ligious movements and action of the people apart, and in their 
 own independent spheres, that makes wise citizens, alike on 
 religious and on civil grounds, look with alarm and jealousy 
 on any endeavors, on the part either of Protestants or Catholics, 
 to secure any special attention or support, any partial or sepa- 
 rate legislation or subsidies from either the National or the State 
 Governments. I have already told you that Protestants, rep- 
 resenting the great sects in this country, are now laboring, by 
 moveable conventions, to mould public opinion in a way to give 
 finally a theological character to the Constitution. In a much 
 more pardonable spirit, because in accordance with their histo- 
 
17 
 
 rical antecedents, their hereditary temper, and their ecclesiastical 
 logic, the Roman Catholics in this country are, in many States, 
 and every great city of the Union, using the tremendous power 
 they possess as the make-weight of parties, to turn the public 
 treasure in a strong current into their own channels, and thus 
 secure an illegitimate support as a religious body. It is not too 
 much to guess, that more than half of the ecclesiastical wealth 
 of the Roman Catholic Church in America, against the wishes 
 and convictions of a Protestant country, has been voted to it in 
 lands and grants by municipalities and legislatures, trading for 
 Irish votes. The Catholic Church thus has a factitious prosperity 
 and progress. It is largely sustained by Protestants — not on 
 grounds of charity and toleration, or from a sense of its useful- 
 ness, (that were well privately done,) but from low and unworthy 
 political motives in both the great parties of the country. Now, 
 that Roman Catholics themselves should take advantage of their 
 solidarity as a people and a Church, and of the power of their 
 priesthood, with all uninformed and some enlightened commu- 
 nicants, to turn the political will into a machine for grinding 
 their ecclesiastical grist, is not unnatural, nor wholly unpardon- 
 able. But it is fearfully dangerous to them and to us. Their 
 success — due to the sense of the Protestant strength which 
 thinks it can afford to blink their machinations, or to the pre- 
 occupation of the public mind with the emulative business 
 pursuits of the time, or to the confidence which the American 
 people seem to feel in the final and secure divorce of Church 
 and State — their unchecked success encourages them to bolder 
 and more bold demands, and accustoms the people to more care- 
 less and more perilous acquiescence in their claims. The principle 
 of authority in religion, which has so many temperamental adhe- 
 rents in all countries ; the inherent love of pomp and show in 
 worship, strongest in the least educated ; a natural weariness of 
 sectarian divisions, commonest among lazy thinkers and stupid 
 consciences — all these play into the hands of the Romanists, 
 and they are making hay while the sun shines. 
 
 There are no reviews, no newspapers in this country, so bold 
 and unqualified ; none so unscrupulous and so intensely zealous 
 3 
 
18 
 
 and partizan ; none so fearless and outspoken as the Catholic 
 journals. They profess to despise Protestant opposition; they 
 deride the feeble tactics of other Christian sects ; they are more 
 ultramontane, more Roman, more Papal, than French, German* 
 Austrian, Bavarian, Italian believers; they avow their pur- 
 pose to make this a Roman Catholic country, and they hope to 
 live on the Protestant enemy while they are converting him. 
 They often put their religious faith above their political obliga- 
 tion, and, as bishops and priests, make it a duty to the church for 
 their members to vote as Catholics rather than as American citi- 
 zens. Not what favors the peace, prosperity, and Union of the 
 nation, but what favors their church, is the supreme question 
 for them at every election ; and American politicians, for their 
 predatory purposes, have taught them this, and are their lead- 
 ers in it. 
 
 Now, as an American citizen, I say nothing against the equality 
 of the rights of the Roman Catholics and the Protestants — both 
 may lawfully strive, in their unpolitical spheres, for the mastery, 
 and the law may not favor or disfavor either ; nor can anything 
 be done to prevent Roman Catholics from using their votes as 
 Roman Catholics, if they please. It is against the spirit, but 
 not against the letter of the Constitution. At any rate it can- 
 not be helped ; only, it may compel Protestants to form parties 
 and vote as Protestants against Roman Catholic interests, which 
 would be a deplorable necessity, and lead, sooner or later, 
 through religious parties in politics, to religious wars. The 
 way to avoid such a horrible possibility — alas, such a threaten- 
 ing probability for the next generation — is at once to look with 
 the utmost carefulness and the utmost disfavor upon every effort 
 on the part of either Protestants or Catholics to mix up secta- 
 rian or theological or religions questions, with national and 
 State and city politics. 
 
 Every appeal of a sect, a denominational church, or sectarian 
 charity of any description, to the General Government, or State or 
 city governments, for subsidies or favors, should be at once dis- 
 countenanced and forbidden by public opinion, and made 
 impossible by positive statute. The Protestant sects in this 
 
19 
 
 country should hasten to remove from their record any advan- 
 tages whatsoever guaranteed to them by civil law to any parti- 
 ality or sectarian distinction. The most important privilege 
 they enjoy by law in most of the States, is the right of keeping 
 the Bible in the public schools. It is a privilege associated with 
 the tenderest and most sacred symbol of the Protestant faith— 
 the Bible. To exclude it from the public schools is to the reli- 
 gious affections of Protestants like Abraham's sacrifice of his 
 only son. When it was first proposed, I felt horror-stricken, and 
 instinctively opposed it ; but I have thought long and anxiously 
 upon the subject, and have, from pure logical necessity and con- 
 sistency, been obliged to change — nay, reverse my opinion. 
 Duty to the unsectarian character of our civil institutions de- 
 mands that this exclusion should be made. It will not be any dis- 
 claimer of the importance of the Bible in the education of 
 American youth, but only a concession that we cannot carry on 
 the religious with the secular education of American children, 
 at the public expense and in the public schools. So long as 
 Protestant Christians insist, merely in the strength of their 
 great majority, upon maintaining the Bible in the public schools, 
 they justify Roman Catholics in demanding that the public 
 money for education shall be distributed to sects in proportion 
 to the number of children they educate. This goes far to break 
 up the common school system of this country, and, if carried 
 out, must ultimately tend to dissolve the Union, which morally 
 depends upon the community of feeling and the homogeneity of 
 culture produced by an unsectarian system of common schools. 
 
 Let the Protestant portion of this country, the vast majority, 
 by its utter fidelity to the divorce of Church and State, of reli- 
 gion and politics, throw all theological, religious, and ecclesias- 
 tic questions back where they belong — into the arena of logic, 
 historical evidence, literary or religious discussion ; into pulpits, 
 synods, religious conferences — and it will quickly appear whether 
 this is a Protestant country or not. It is only because we fool- 
 ishly allow our jesuitical friends to drag the Roman Catholic 
 Church into the political circus, and hitch the horses of party 
 and legislation to its wheels, that we see its alarming progress. 
 
20 
 
 They, we may be sure, intoxicated with present success, will do 
 their utmost to keep religious affairs mixed in with all political 
 questions. They thrive by it. But will they not pause to con- 
 sider whether their present swift advance on this route, and by 
 this method, is not the road to ruin ? Has not the history and 
 and fate of American slavery been a solemn lesson for them ? 
 Did not that " domestic institution " attempt to make itself a 
 national one — establish its propaganda, send its missionaries to 
 Congress, and compel its whole political life to turn upon the 
 question of extending its dark area ? Did it not long prosper 
 and thrive upon the political pabulum of threatening and fear, 
 and spread until it invaded territories consecrated to liberty — 
 nay, until it seemed almost ready to seize the national capital, 
 flag, archives and all, and rule over a nation held together by 
 the black marble key-stone of negro slavery, pronounced a 
 divine institution ? Only slowly the nation comprehended its 
 purpose ; for it was an inevitable purpose— a part of the logic 
 of slavery — not so much the fault as the fatal proclivity of its 
 heirs; but when the nation did fully comprehend, it rose and 
 cut down the accursed upas at a stroke, and tore its roots out of 
 the national soil ! Will the American people — a Christian, 
 Protestant nation — see any form of sacramental, hierarchical, 
 theological priestcraft, getting possession of their politics and 
 government, cheating them before their very eyes out of their 
 rights and liberties, and not, sooner or later, treat it just as they 
 treated slavery ? — nay, override the Constitution to save the 
 nation threatened with a government of priests? 
 
 It is the certainty of this result, so much more fearful for 
 them than for us, that makes it the duty of Protestants to warn 
 the Catholic hierarchy and the politicians that support them, 
 whither they are tending; while they carefully cleanse their 
 own skirts from every stain of political commerce, or want of 
 fidelity to the fundamental law that keeps Church and State 
 apart in our country. 
 
 Of course, I shall be asked what, if religion and politics are 
 wholly divorced, we are to do with Bible oaths, with prayer in 
 Congress, with presidential piety in proclamations and mes- 
 
21 
 
 sages. I think very little harm would come to the morality 
 and piety of the country if they were all omitted. Of course, 
 the laws concerning oaths would require important amendments. 
 A lie in matters of contract would have to be punished like a 
 broken oath. Everything else involves no principle, because it 
 is voluntary, and matter not of law, but custom. If the Presi- 
 dent is a Christian, surely his office does not forbid his speaking 
 as a Christian, and it is no offence to Jew or Gentile that he 
 has and professes his Christian faith, even in a public document ; 
 but good taste and public policy might be better served by his 
 writing wholly in his official and political capacity. 
 
 So long as custom and usage warrants Christian prayers in 
 Congress and Legislatures, there can be no objection of princi- 
 ple, if objection is not taken by those who elect to hear them ; 
 they do not commit those who do not choose to be committed, 
 and are not of legislative or political value or weight. Still, we 
 should not be less Christian in character or reputation, if, on 
 grounds of political duty and separation of Church and State, 
 even in their shadows, we omitted them all. 
 
 Let us understand, in conclusion, that Religion and Politics 
 have their proper meeting-place, and a far closer union than 
 any between Church and State, in the private conscience, will, 
 heart of every citizen ! Politics to a religious man will have a 
 tremendous religious obligation, a full religious light, a pro- 
 found religious influence. Politics to a Christian will be dis- 
 charged in the light and under the impulses and motives that 
 warm a Christian's heart. But his Christian heart will teach 
 him justice, charity, firmness, candor, and the importance of 
 keeping theological and ecclesiastical ends (however important 
 in themselves) within their own lawful sphere. 
 
 As Unitarians, a long persecuted and disfranchised sect in 
 Great Britain, and still suffering injustice from public sentiment 
 and religious bodies in this country, we are naturally specially 
 sensitive to all questions touching religious liberty. It has 
 seemed fitting then to use this valuable occasion, spite of its 
 personal and denominational interest, for a larger purpose. 
 Indeed, we need here in the capital, a better place than this 
 
22 
 
 obscure chapel affords, to plead for Christian liberty, with the 
 people of this country. Our position as a sect gives us a spe- 
 cial freedom to deal in a broad and candid and fearless way with 
 questions of this character, which are seldom approached by 
 denominations bound in creed, without foregoing conclusions and 
 sectarian biasses. I am conscious in this appeal of none, and 
 have honestly endeavored to avoid all — not by a mush of con- 
 cession and compromise — but by fidelity to certain great prin- 
 ciples, let them cut where they would. May we not hope that 
 the Unitarian denomination here, and through the country, will 
 feel the urgent importance of maintaining in this capital a 
 church worthy of our grand principles, and a fitting place from 
 which to address the representative men who have charge of this 
 Government from time to time, touching the civil and religious 
 rights of the nation, and specially at those crises when great 
 questions arise touching the freedom and peace and stability of 
 our country. 
 
-SB-