Church and State (Part 2)

In a preceding number of this periodical a statement was given of the leading theories by which many seek to justify the union of the State with the Church. These theories have been drawn only from writers who profess to recognize the two organizations as distinct from each other, however inaccurately they may have defined the boundaries of either. It is scarcely necessary to apprize the reader, that on the one and on the other side of this intermediate school, are to be found two opposite poles of doctrine. The first may be said to find its ablest representative in the philosopher of Malmesbury; though as there is nothing new in error, Hobbes simply revived and modified the exploded dogmas of Democritus, which were propagated still later by the Epicureans. Regarding human law as the only source of moral distinctions, he consistently enough considered the Church the mere creature of the State, spoken into existence only as an instrument to accomplish the ends of civil policy. The second extreme is that held by the Romanists, who make the Church, on the contrary, engulf the State; as may be seen from the writings of Bellarmine, and others of the same communion. The extravagance of both these opinions is the best guarantee that they will never prevail. The former, we may hope, is already abandoned to the corruption and worms which must at last feed upon the wretched carcass of infidelity. The latter will scarcely disturb the American reader, unless he has the mischance of falling in with the angelical doctor of Romanism in this country, the neophyte Brownson; who, in his next metempsychosis, may perchance turn up in the person of a Mohammedan Mufti. Dreaming theorizers may fling their speculations from their lattices upon the busy world; but the strong and practical sense of mankind will scarcely consent that the State shall swallow the Church, or the Church engulf the State. Those writers who admit these two institutions to be distinct in their origin, and yet contend that they both aim at a common end, are more likely to influence public opinion; and with these the whole controversy must in our day be waged.

The design of the present article will be to follow the path of investigation already opened in a former number of this Review, and to examine the principles which were at that time sprung from cover.

I. We are first brought into contact with the extravagant doctrine of Mr. Gladstone: that the State is strictly a moral person, having a conscience, and bound to profess a religion, and to sanctify its acts by a worship of its own. That we do not misrepresent this author will appear from his own language:

“In the government and laws of a country we find not a mere aggregation of individual acts, but a composite agency, the general result yielded by a multitude of efforts, each of which in part modifies, in part is absorbed amid the rest. This composite agency represents the personality of the nation; and as a great distinct moral reality demands a worship of its own, namely the worship of the State, represented in its living and governing members, and therefore, a public and joint worship.”¹Church and State, vol. I. p. 93

This conclusion he reiterates as follows:

“I return then to the position that as the nation fulfills the great conditions of a person—a real unity of being, of deliberating, of acting, and of suffering; and these in a definite manner and upon an extended scale, and with immense moral functions to discharge and influences to exercise, both upon its members and extrinsically; therefore it has that kind of clear, large and conscious responsibility which can alone be met by its specifically professing a religion, and offering, through its organ the State, that worship which shall publicly sanctify its acts. That which by its governing organ it professes specially, it must encourage and maintain throughout its inferior members, as a part of such profession itself.”²Church and State, vol. I. p. 105

This language cannot be misunderstood. The State in its corporate character is just as truly capable of religion, which it is just as fully bound to profess, as are the individuals which compose it. It is obvious that if this opinion holds, all further argument is superseded. The advocates of the Union need be at no pains to prove the insufficiency of voluntaryism, nor to defend their favorite scheme from the charge of corrupting the Church. The union of Church and State is simply a necessity, and nothing more can be said to purpose. If the State has a conscience and is under obligation to perform acts of worship, then an established Church is required, as the visible embodiment of the State’s religion and the recognized organ of the State’s worship. Nor are we left in doubt as to the exclusiveness of this National Church, since as a part of its profession itself the State must maintain through its inferior members what its own organ may happen to dictate. If the most iron spiritual despotism is not erected upon this foundation, it must be from softening influences which come from without, and not from any checks in the system itself.

It is not difficult to point out the fundamental fallacy of so monstrous an error: it arises simply from the ambiguity of the term person as applied to designate the State; and consists in employing this word in its secondary and metaphorical use, with a meaning, however, which attaches to it only in its primary and proper signification. A person properly implies an individual; an entity separate from every other, having its own consciousness and will. It is thus defined by Mr. Locke:

“To find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking, intelligent being that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing at different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it.”³Essay on the Human Understanding, book 2d, ch. 27, sect. 9

In like manner Archdeacon Paley:

“That which can contrive, which can design, must be a person. These capacities constitute personality, for they imply consciousness and thought. They require a centre in which perceptions unite, and from which volitions flow; which is mindand in whatever mind resides is a person.”⁴Natural Theology. Ch. 23

Every etymology of the word—whether we derive it from “personuit,” the issuing of sound through the mouthpiece of a mask, first applied to the mask itself and then to the conception of an individual character; or from the combination of the words per se una—impresses upon us this idea of individuality of being. Now when the word person is transferred from the individual to designate a society, it must be employed in a figurative sense, and because of some analogy discovered between the two. As all the individuals of a society are bound by some common tie, and thus in a certain sense become one, the analogy between this unity of the society and the individuality of a single being, warrants the figurative use of the word person to indicate this resemblance. Again, as individuals linked together in society concentrate their minds upon a given point and agree in a common conclusion, which is carried out in a joint action, this agreement of many minds so resembles the unity of a single mind, that it may be expressed by the metaphorical use of the word person. It is manifest, however, that this transfer of the word is justifiable only so far as the resemblance shall hold. It is precisely here that Mr. Gladstone commits his first capital blunder. His definition of the social person is just enough; a society, says he, is a person “so soon as it assumes the determinate form of incorporation and becomes subject internally to a deliberative regulating principle.”⁵Church and State, vol. I. p. 63 His error consists in employing the term person in a sense which is not included within his own definition. Incorporation gives to a society a unity resembling the individuality of a single being; and “the deliberative regulating principle” can only mean that power in many minds to debate and to concur, which is analogous to the power of thought and of will residing in a single mind. So far the analogy holds—and upon the ground of this analogy we consent to speak of the social person. Now, reasons Mr. Gladstone, if “the nation fulfills the great conditions of a person,” then “its clear, large and conscious responsibility can only be met by its specifically professing a religion.” But what are these great conditions of a person which the State fulfills, as Mr. Gladstone himself establishes them? Manifestly, the above definition includes but two, incorporation and deliberation; as in this very connection he specifies, “a real unity of being, of deliberating, of acting, of suffering.” Yet his conclusion embraces a third condition, in regard to which he has traced no analogy whatever between a society and a person. He is guilty of the gross paralogism of reasoning from two conditions in his premises, to a third and entirely distinct condition in his conclusion. The State is a person, because, like an individual, it is one and can deliberate; the individual person is bound to be religious and to worship God; therefore, the State is bound to profess religion and to worship God—that is, because the State is like the individual in two particulars, it must bear all the responsibilities of the individual in a third particular, in regard to which, for aught that appears, there is no affinity between them. He was bound to show that the analogy holds just as truly between the religious capacities of the State and of the individual, as between the other two characteristics; and then, if it pleased him, he might have applied the term person to the State on this ground also. Instead of which, he has exactly reversed this process: he argues from the figured use of the word person in analogies that do hold, to a resemblance on a third point in which the analogy fails entirely.

Mr. Gladstone seems himself to become alarmed at the swiftness of the current which is sweeping him on to most portentous conclusions. He has the sagacity to perceive that the same mode of reasoning will establish the same conclusion in regard to all associations to which the term person in its metaphorical sense may be applied. He feels that his readers will be startled at a doctrine which renders it imperative upon Banking and Canal Companies to profess a joint religion; and seeks relief from this absurdity by inventing a distinction of degrees of personality. In the case of those associations the personality is intermittent, occasional, conventional, and conversant only with material interests; while that of the State is general, permanent, natural, and moral in its ends.⁶Church and State, vol. 1, pp. 71, 94. Upon this alleged difference he affirms a collective religion to be necessary to the latter, though not predicable of the former. This distinction without a difference, purely fictitious as it is, betrays the decrepitude of the theory, of which it was an after thought. Personality, where it exists, is entire, and does not admit of degrees. A Rail Road Company, for example, is as truly a person, quoad its purposes, as ever the State can be, quoad its purposes. Nor does the fact that it is conventional, and looks only to physical results, in the least degree affect the integrity of its personality. As far as it is a person at all, it is a person entire. The State may comprehend wider interests; but cannot be more perfect as a person than other associations within the scope of their interests. His theory remains still under the pressure of the difficulty, of which this awkward explanation is an humble confession; and his logic will force us to ascribe consciousness and conscience to a Fire Company just as necessarily as to the State.

As though but half persuaded himself, Mr. Gladstone introduces another limitation. He says, “the State is properly, and according to its nature, moral; conversant with moral subject matter, and fruitful of moral influences.” The inference is, that as a moral institute, religion becomes essential to it; while it may not be necessary to conventional associations “conversant only with material interests.” That is, if we understand the distinction here made, the State deals with the relations of men among themselves, while these conventional societies deal only with the relations of men to things. But would not a profounder reflection have taught that our relation to things at last resolves itself into a relation to persons; and so a moral basis must underlie every association of whatever character? This truth seems to be recognized by Dr. Lieber in his Political Ethics, when he says: “Property, a relation between an individual and a thing, becomes a matter of right, a jural relation, only inasmuch as others are excluded from that property: it signifies, therefore, again a relation between two individuals.”⁷Vol. 1, p. 216 The State deals with “moral subject matter,” because it defines and guards the rights of men relatively to each other. So with every other association upon earth, though perhaps in a less degree than with the State. Where, then, is the ground for so wide a distinction as is made the basis of Mr Gladstone’s argument? Both have respect to rights—to rights at last between individuals, and both alike must have a moral basis, because neither of them could exist but for the moral relations of men to one another. So this second limitation fails equally with the other; leaving these “conventional societies,” by virtue of their personality, under the same imperative necessity with that great moral reality, the State” to profess religion, and to engage in a joint and public worship.

But Mr. Gladstone has committed a second blunder not less pervading nor less fatal than this. He has wholly confounded the term moral with the term religious. After proving that the State is a moral person, he considers that he has succeeded in proving it also religious. Yet the two terms are far from being identical. A writer whom we have already quoted, distinguishes between them thus:

“If religion means all that appertains to man’s relation to God, it is evident that as it is not an individual relation to any other human individual, it cannot in its very essence ever become a matter of the State; because the State has to do with jural relations only, and these must exist between man and man.”⁸Dr. Lieber’s Political Ethics, vol. 1, p.216.

This distinction we regard as eminently just: religion is exclusively an individual matter, because it simply considers man in his relations to God and the Divine law. However it may define and regulate the social duties of men, its jurisdiction extends over these only as in neglecting them men transgress the commandment of God, and are responsible for their trespass upon his authority. In no part of his book, more than in this, is Mr. Gladstone obnoxious to the severe but just censure of Mr. Macauly in using “language grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import;” and which, with his singular felicity of illustration, he compares to that “transparent haze through which the sailor sees capes and mountains of false sizes and in false bearings, and which is more dangerous than utter darkness.” That we may not be suspected of exaggeration, let the evidence of this author’s extravagance be furnished in his own language:

“Religion is applicable to the State, because it is the office of the State in its personality, to evolve the social life of man, which social life is essentially moral in the ends it contemplates; and which can only be effectually moral when it is religious. Or, religion is directly necessary to the right employment of the energies of the State as a State.”⁹Church and State, vol.1, p. 93.

It is impossible to estimate the harm which is done in the world by what Mr. Macaulay terms this “obscure sanctity” of style. Unhappily serious minds, the most likely to be captivated by its solemn and sepulchral tones, are too unsuspicious to distinguish always between religion and cant. There is a religious jargon afloat among men, found frequently upon the lips of the most flippant, which passes for the true language of Canaan, while it is only a dialect of Babylon. A few of the catchwords of Christianity, profusely employed, serve as countersigns which gain admission for spies into the camp of Israel. If Mr. Gladstone means simply that the nature of God is the ultimate source of moral distinctions, and that the Divine law is, therefore, the authoritative standard of duty—if he aims only to say that men who refuse to govern their conduct and to regulate their opinions by the teachings of Revelation, are, in so far, disqualified for the duties of legislation; and that rulers are as certainly accountable to God for their public as for their private acts—we cordially and fully agree with him. But he evidently intends no such common-places as these. He is at special pains to distinguish between the State as State, and all the individuals which compose it; between the public duties of the one, and the private and personal responsibilities of the other. He speaks freely of “the Statesman laying aside in his public function a part of his individuality;” and of “his acts as being done without an agent, unless the nation, the moral person of the State, be that agent.”¹⁰Ibid, p. 92 He infers from this that “the responsibilities of the nation are not satisfied by the individual piety of its members.”¹¹Church and State, vol. 1, pp. 91-128. He terms the State “a reflective agency conversant with moral subject matter, involving of necessity a conscience, which is ex vi termini the regulator of moral offices;”¹²Ibid, p.89. by which—though in what sense it is hard to discover—it is invested with the attributes of mind and of conscience, capable of weighing reasons, and of feeling the pressure of obligation. With unshrinking steadfastness to his theory, he does not stagger to endow it, in a very undefinable way, even with a soul; and to attach a strictly retributive character to public calamities, by which they become to the State a substitute for the sanctions of a future judgment.¹³Ibid, pp. 105, 107. Within its own limits the State has a mission to perform in propagating religion, as strictly obligatory as the mission of the individual Christian, to extend the Gospel to all mankind.¹⁴Ibid, pp. 111, 112. As a moral unit, it must worship God with a devotion separate from the homage which is rendered by all the individuals which compose it.¹⁵Ibid, pp. 93-110-128-129. Now all this is preposterous, unless Mr. Gladstone will advance a step further and maintain that the State is a living entity, and has a conscious existence; which will bring it within the category of an individual—and we may then agree with him that it has “the same specific obligations which attach to an individual conscience, owning the law of Divine obedience.”¹⁶Ibid, p. 110. If, with his characteristic hardihood, he had openly carried his speculations to this conclusion, his argument would have passed harmlessly into the number of those singular hallucinations, which the most gifted minds, overridden by a single idea, sometimes put forth in the form of overwhelming paradoxes. We will not trifle with the reader’s understanding by attempting to show that the State has no substantive existence; but is only a name given to define a relation in which a body of men stand to one another. It is an outrage upon language, to speak of a national conscience as separate and distinct from the consciences of the Ruler and his subjects.

That the individual alone can be the subject of religion, would seem to be almost intuitively evident. We cannot predicate religion of any who have not a soul in the most strict and proper sense of that word; a soul capable of receiving communications from God, comprehending duty, and conscious of its subjection to the Divine law. This reasonable being we find further to be endowed with an immortal life which the law brings under mortgage: “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” He accounts to God for all his purposes and acts, and as a responsible agent receives in a future world those rewards or punishments which he may deserve. He is capable of becoming depraved, and also of renewal and of sanctification, if God is pleased to manifest his Grace in so doing. All these things enter into the idea of religion, as that idea is realized to us in the government of God; and not one of them—neither capacity for obedience and for transgression, nor accountability, nor the power of being depraved and of being redeemed and regenerated, nor capacity for endless bliss or eternal sorrow-can be affirmed of any but an individual being. Unless, then, the State, in its corporate character as State, has a soul—is immortal—can fall from holiness into sin—can be the subject of a spiritual birth—can stand at the bar of judgment and suffer eternal damnation—it is not a subject of religion. Mr. Gladstone cannot be permitted to slur over these issues in a single paragraph. He must distinctly assume them as necessary parts of his theory, or it disappears like “the baseless fabric of a dream.”

The source of this whole error, pervading the writings of others besides Mr. Gladstone, is the constant merging of individuals into that great abstraction, the State, and confounding things that differ. If for example the nation sins—say, in the violation of solemn treaties or in waging an unjust war—who is the party to be charged with guilt? The State, as State, replies Mr. Gladstone; which is accordingly visited with just retribution by public calamities. But will it be maintained that the individual rulers who perpetrate these wrongs are not immediately and personally responsible to God for the same? Are these not personal sins which call for individual repentance, without which they will be surely punished in the day of final account? But upon Mr. Gladstone’s hypothesis, that these are “acts done without an agent, if the moral person of the State be not that agent,” it is hard to see how this private responsibility can be maintained. As for the public calamities, which may come in the form of famine, or pestilence, or in the defeat of armies; these are not visited upon that abstraction, the State, but upon individuals throughout the length of the land; who as represented in their rulers, are regarded “participes criminis,” and answerable also for the wrong. If we attend carefully to the manner in which God administers his government among men, we shall find that those sins committed more directly against himself, he mainly reserves for punishment in a future state of being; but those vices and sins which tend to the destruction of human society, he checks and avenges also by immediate and kindred punishments. Drunkenness and uncleanness, for instance, are personal offenses; but as their prevalence would soon bring society to an end, he holds them under a measure of restraint by early and visible penalties. These penalties are not designed as a substitute for the retributions of another world; but, in addition to them, they constitute a part of his providential arrangements, by which he holds society in being, for the accomplishment of his other and higher purposes. Among these providential checks and restraints are we disposed to class those calamities which fall upon communities of men. They are not a substitute for the strict retributions which will fall upon rulers and legislators for their public sins committed as functionaries; but are designed to indicate God’s providential control over communities, and to preserve them from premature and utter extinction. If, too, as in our national Congress, the divine blessing is invoked, through a Chaplain, upon its deliberations, it is not, as Mr. Gladstone supposes, the nation, which as a moral unit offers a State-worship to God; but these functionaries, as individual men, recognize their individual dependence upon God, and confess their personal responsibility to him. As statesmen, engaged in the discharge of difficult duties, they acknowledge their need of divine direction, precisely as they should do in their own more private affairs. They by no means “merge their individuality” into the moral person of the State; but as individuals they recognize the truth taught by all history, that counselors, who break away from the divine law, become Ahithophels whom God “appoints to defeat.” In like manner, when governments appoint chaplaincies in the army or in the navy, it is not because as missionaries they are employed in the propagation of religious truth; but because the public service has removed men from the situations in which they could seek religious offices for themselves. The State has no right to extinguish the religious nature of those whom it employs, nor to wrest their religious principles from them. Yet as the public service necessarily removes men from their homes and their sanctuaries, it simply seeks to alleviate the sacrifice by the compensation of a chaplaincy. So too, when the chief magistrate recommends a public fast or public thanksgiving, he does not, as the High Priest of the nation, offer a national worship; but simply as the representative of a Christian people, and merely as their voice, he gives utterance to the general sentiment pervading the hearts of all, which calls for the recognition of God in his providence. The worship at last is that of individuals who are brought into concert.

We forbear to follow Mr. Gladstone into the practical consequences of his theory; partly because that theory is original only upon the points which we have already discussed; and partly because those consequences have been portrayed by Mr. Macaulay, with that piquancy and power of illustration, which are the peculiar attributes of his pen. The reader will agree with us that the ethical argument drawn from an analysis of the nature of the State, is a stupendous failure; and that the support, which it was designed to bring to the doctrine of an established Church, fails with it.

II. The second and far more common defense of the union is based upon the assumption that the State has in charge the whole well-being of men, and may lawfully use all the agencies which can contribute to this result. Of course, as religion is the most important of these agencies, it is inferred that the State must have control over it, and must endow a Church as the instrument for applying it. By writers of this class the definition of the State given by Aristotle is eagerly adopted; πόλις γινομένη μὲν τοῦ ζῆν ἕνεκεν, οὖσα δὲ τοῦ εὖ ζῆν—a breadth of definition which leaves margin enough to draw along the most magnificent conclusions. Hooker, for example, in his Ecclesiastical Polity, teaches that “the Church and the Commonwealth are personally one society; termed a Commonwealth, as it liveth under whatsoever form of secular law or regiment—a Church, as it hath the spiritual law of Jesus Christ.” Dr. Arnold, as we have already seen, makes the State and the Church mutually interpenetrate each other—so seeking the same end as to become really identical. “Wherever,” says he, “the nation or government is avowedly Christian, the State or the nation is virtually the Church.” Burke, too, in his splendid language, describes the State as “a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection; a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living and those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”¹⁷Reflections on the Revolution in France. Coleridge likewise recognizes this at the base of his singular theory. His conception of the State is that of the union of three great estates; the first is that of the land-owners, or possessors of fixed property, whose conservative influence brings permanency to the nation; the second is made up of merchants, artisans, &c. whose influence secures progressiveness and personal freedom; while in the king or executive, as the beam of these scales, “the cohesion by interdependence and the unity of the country are established.” The third estate, made up of those whose business it is to “secure a continuing and progressive civilization,” is supported from land which he assumes historically to have been reserved, in the original distribution of territory, for national use; and which he therefore terms “the Nationalty.” This third estate is divided into two sections: the first of which remains at the Universities, the fountain heads of learning, and is employed in enlarging the knowledge already possessed; the second and much larger division is distributed throughout the nation as the guides and instructors of the people. This third estate he terms the National Clerisy or Clergy, and in its idea is wholly secular, and distinct from the Church of Christ. Christianity comes in, however, as “a blessed accident, a providential boon,” “a most awful Godsend.” As theology is the prima scientia, the Church may well undertake the functions of this National Clerisy; “two functions not requiring nor necessarily implying two functionaries.” The two are therefore in fact identified; and the National Reserve is devoted to the support of Christianity, upon the condition that the Church shall discharge the office of the National Clerisy. Yet though their functions are thus consolidated, the two institutions are separate in idea, and may become so in fact. The National Clerisy may be destroyed by the impropriation of the Nationalty, and still the Church of Christ remain intact. This striking theory, characterized by that originality which marks it as the speculation of a profound thinker, we have not subjected to critical examination, for an obvious reason. A perfect autocrat in his use of language, Coleridge makes the national Church a very different thing from that against which we are now arguing. It is, in his conception, a wholly secular matter, and identified with the Christian Church by a sort of accident, only because those who constitute the latter are particularly available for the uses of the former. It is obvious, however, that, with the other writers with whom we have classed him, he distinctly assumes the object of the State to be the very indefinite one of promoting, in every conceivable way, the highest happiness of men; the εὖ ζῆν of Aristotle. It remains to show that this happiness cannot be promoted while man’s religious interests are neglected, and the argument in favor of an establishment is supposed to be complete. The State cannot compass its ultimate end until it brings religion home to every subject; and for this purpose it endows and commissions the Church. We shall inquire directly into the legitimacy of this inference, even admitting the premises, which we are scarcely prepared to do.

The analogy which is employed to justify this conclusion, is the control of the State over the education of the people. The State exercises this control, because education is necessary to man’s highest development and happiness; and as religion is necessary in a far higher degree, ex fortiori, the State may and should control it. It has the same sort of right to endow a Church which it has to found a University. The reader does not need to be informed that there are many who insist that the whole business of education should be remitted to individual enterprise and to voluntary combinations formed for this end—who resist as much the State’s prerogative of directing the education as the religion of the country. To such, of course, this analogy will fail to carry conviction. We do not propose, however, to embarrass our present investigation with any discussion of this point. We would simply remark incidentally that a line of proof may be opened in favor of the State’s undertaking, to a certain extent, the work of education, independent of the broad principle upon which it is ordinarily grounded. No one hesitates to admit the propriety of naval and of military schools, as necessary parts of the national defense. They are obviously just as necessary as a line of battle ships, or a series of military posts. Indeed these latter would be useless without competent officers who shall employ them for the purposes of their construction. Upon substantially the same principles may National Universities be justified. The State has as much need of jurists and legislators as of seamen and soldiers—of judges on the bench and statesmen in the council chamber, as of generals in the field and commanders in the fleet. As careful and elaborate training, too, is required for civil as for military functions. If it be replied, that but few of those who obtain a University education actually fill these public stations, so but few who pass through severe military discipline ever become generals. In either case, opportunities for knowledge must be afforded to a large class, in order to insure the selection of a few competent to occupy public trusts. We may go a step further. As every free government is of necessity self-government, there must be a modicum of intelligence pervading the masses of society, before the nation is fit to be entrusted with its own liberty. History affords no more melancholy lesson than the folly of committing the power of self-government to a people wholly unfit to exercise it. In order, then, to its own preservation, the State may be compelled to carry instruction down through all grades, even to the lowest to teach the masses at least. so much that they may understand and appreciate the charter by which all their privileges and rights are held, and form an intelligent judgment upon all the great issues brought before the country. In obedience to the fundamental law of self-protection, it may perhaps be the duty of the State to furnish a scheme of education sifting down from the highest to the lowest strata in society, and ranging from the extensive curriculum of a University to the elementary teaching of a primary school. But the argument will here be retorted, that if education is necessary to fit a people for the exercise and preservation of freedom, is not religion of transcendentally greater necessity? We grant freely that it is. We admit that without the influence of religion, men can never be brought into subjection to any government—that without it, rulers will always be tyrants, subjects always rebellious. But it is one thing to admit that religion is necessary to the existence and perpetuation of the State, and a far different thing to admit that the State should furnish and control it. It is here that we begin to discover a wide distinction between education and religion, as they relatively affect the State. If education, in a wider or narrower sense, is necessary to the State, it may be the State’s duty to supply it, because there is no organization framed expressly for this office. But if religion is necessary to the State—as we assuredly believe it is—it is not the State’s province to provide it, simply because another organization exists by divine appointment, whose sole vocation is to exert and to diffuse this influence. Taking then the widest definition of the State—making its object as indefinite as the loosest declaimer may desire—and granting that one of its peculiar functions is to conduct the whole business of education—it does not follow that it has the same control over religion. The simple fact that the Church is a divine institution, appointed expressly for this end, bars the inference which is so confidently drawn. Here, then, we take our stand. Religion being necessary to the State, if it were left without provision, would fall from necessity under the care of the State. But if the State were competent to this trust—or if it were the design of God that it should assume it—we do not see the call for another and separate organization, which either must lie idle or do a work of supererogation. All those views which make the State the instrument of promoting man’s highest welfare in every way, assigning to it no definite functions, tend to make it the το παν—the universal society engulfing every other. The Church may cease to exist, or becomes henceforth a part of the State’s machinery. The argument drifts by a strong logical current upon the breakers of Hobbes’ infidel doctrine, that the Church is but an engine of the State, having no authority of her own, and commissioned to no work by her divine head.

So far we have reasoned upon the concession that the broad definition of the State given above is the true one—if definition that can be called, which assigns to it no functions that are at all distinctive. We have chosen to take the outposts of the argument, before putting the fortress itself in siege. Admitting the State’s prerogative to regulate the whole education and refinement of the people, we simply deny it an equal right to control religion; because this is made the vocation of the Church—an institution co-ordinate with the State, and equally the ordinance of God. Our position, however, becomes stronger, when we recall this concession, and insist that the State exists with defined powers and for a specified end. We frankly acknowledge our preference of the clear, well-marked theory of Warburton, above all the misty speculations we have been considering. We agree with him that the State has for its object the conservation of life and property; taking this phrase in the wider sense in which Warburton himself intended it—and not in the close and technical meaning which his commentators have forced upon it. The State is instituted for civil and temporal ends. It protects the person of the citizen, secures the avails of his industry and talent, throwing its shield over all his relations and rights so far as they pertain to this lower world—and in this way becomes the conditio sine qua non to his full development, individually and socially, as an active, intelligent, yet dependent being.

The State is doubtless a far more interesting object of contemplation, reposing in dim magnificence, its gigantic outline scarcely seen in the shadow of its great but undefined attributes. But as a working instrument, it needs to be realized to us with its prerogatives accurately bounded and its contour sharply defined. Indeed these vague representations seem to us to tend to a political Fourierism more injurious, because projected on a larger scale, than the socialism which breaks up the domestic circle. Communism, with results which could easily be foretold and need not be described, seeks to destroy the family economy and to melt mankind down into one huge mass. What better result can attend the effort to merge all political and religious associations into one, and to make the State one great commune, in which men shall rather herd than live together? This question finds its answer in the national workshops of France; in that anomalous state of things, where artisans with weapons in their hands thunder at the door of the State, demanding employment, or at least support. The well-being of society is best promoted, not by consolidating all interests and confounding all distinctions, but by an accurate division of labor and of responsibility. Men will sooner reach the perfection of their nature, where the State and the Church shall respectively define, and conscientiously discharge, their separate functions.

Nor do we concede the position assumed by Warburton, that although distinct in their origin and separate in their aims, the State and the Church become more efficient by an alliance. The Church effects her spiritual ends by spiritual, not carnal, means. Her armor is truth; and her appeal is to conscience. She takes cognizance of sins, and her penalties operate only upon the religious nature of men. Christianity with its holy instructions, the godly example of its subjects, and its gracious control over the heart, seeks to make men better as men; and, therefore, better in all their social relations—better in the family, in the neighborhood, in the State. But the moment the Church seeks alliance with the State, and borrows civil pains and penalties, she simply loses, on her part, that spiritual control which her peculiar mission gives over the conscience; and the State, on its part, becomes more complex in its construction, and impeded in its action—while the virtue of both becomes gradually sapped by a connection which is as unnatural as it is unholy. Believing sincerely that these institutions are not identical in their aims, but are two distinct and co-ordinate societies looking to wholly different results—believing further, that the Church, the body and spouse of Christ, is “in a separate precinct” from the State—we do not hesitate to conclude in the strong language of another, that by “logical consequence the connection between them is adulterous and accursed.”

III. We pass now from these general defenses of the Union to one more particular and practical. It is alleged that the voluntary principle—to which every disestablished Church must be remanded—is wholly inadequate to supply a nation with the ordinances of religion. The alternative lies, of course, between drawing upon the State’s resources on the one hand, and a distressing destitution of Gospel privileges on the other. This assertion, however, is a direct impeachment of that wisdom which has framed the Church. That an institution should be created by God for the most important of all ends, should be surrounded by the most solemn of all sanctions, should be called to discharge the most pressing of all obligations—and yet that it should be constitutionally incompetent to the work assigned, seems to us a monstrous proposition. Yet it has been hazarded; and that by persons, who if not restrained by the antecedent improbability of the allegation itself, should have been rendered cautious by reverence for the Church of God.

“Of all the parts of this subject,” says Mr. Gladstone, “probably none have been so thoroughly wrought out as the insufficiency of the voluntary principle.”¹⁸Church and State, vol. I. p. 207.

“Its general law,” he slanderously affirms, “is to provide for those who can pay for the provision, and does not contemplate or tend towards supplying on a large scale the wants of the really poor.”¹⁹Ibid. p. 209.

And still again,

“I believe it is beyond dispute that it was not until the State had become the auxiliary of the Church, in the period of the Roman empire, that she was able to strike her roots throughout the remote and rural districts, as well as those of dense population, and to give universality to her sway by draining off the whole of the votaries that so long continued to crowd the rival worship of the temples.”²⁰Ibid. 214.

For the application of this fact, if not for the fact itself, he was probably indebted to Dr. Chalmers, who employs it in a similar connection in his work on Church and College establishments,²¹p. 234. in which he seems very much in earnest to prove the incompetence of the voluntary principle. It is painful to accuse so good and great a man as Dr. Chalmers, of want of fairness and candor; yet we have rarely read an argument more destitute than his of these noble qualities. This heavy charge against the Church of Christ, of being efficient only while leaning upon the State’s protection, he sustains by alleging that while the population of Scotland had increased from one million to two millions and a half, yet the voluntaries had not overtaken more than one-third of this increase, leaving still a gross population of a million unsupplied with the gospel.²²Church Establishments, p. 272. To say nothing of the want of frankness in overlooking the burdens laid upon Dissenters in supporting the Establishment, as well as in sustaining their own Churches, why should they be held alone responsible for this vast destitution, when by the very terms of the union it devolved upon the established Church to supply it? With what righteousness “was it left, till within these four years, to the energies and efforts of internal voluntaryism to meet and make provision for this enormous deficiency?”²³Ibid. Has Dr. Chalmers made it appear that the Dissenters did not their full share in reclaiming these moral wastes, by reaching that half million of souls whom he admits to have been supplied upon the voluntary principle? And while rebuking the voluntaries for the partiality of their efforts, had he no censures for the Church of the State, in almost wholly neglecting the trust committed particularly to it, and leaving the religious supply of the country just where it was in the days of John Knox? It certainly is strange that he should employ an argument which cuts both ways, and has a keener edge against the Establishment, than it can have against voluntaryism. It seems a just retribution, that while his argument ungenerously seeks to weaken the confidence reposed in the voluntary principle, it should put shame and confusion of face upon the Establishment forever.

In another particular, Dr. Chalmers stands more seriously convicted of injustice. The voluntaryism against which his book is directed, is not that for which the opponents of an established Church chiefly contend. He makes a wide and just distinction between voluntaryism internal and external. The former is identical with the free trade principle, which leaves, in religion as in commerce, the supply to be regulated by the demand. For this theory we have no sympathy; we abandon it to the tender mercies of Dr. Chalmers, and stand by, consenting, while he hews it to pieces. Christianity is essentially aggressive in its character. It does not remain at rest; but attacks every form of religious error, rejecting all compromise, until it shall subdue the world. The people of God are required not only to supply themselves with religious ordinances, but also to furnish the same to those who are destitute. The commission of the Church binds this duty upon her in the following terms—”go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” Teachers of Christianity must be sent—Churches must be erected—and the whole apparatus for evangelizing men, must be afforded to the poor and guilty everywhere. In a word, what Dr. Chalmers scholastically terms voluntaryism ab extra, against which he says not a word in his whole book, is precisely that voluntaryism for which all Dissenters plead; with the exception of those who have imbibed the doctrines of a certain school in political economy. He has indeed written down the free trade principle, which insists that those destitute of the gospel shall be left in their destitution until their own sense of want shall drive them to create religious privileges; while the voluntary principle asserts the duty as well as the power of the Church, by free will contributions, to maintain and propagate religion. What fairness there is in confounding the two the reader can judge for himself. We are willing to give up the argument against Establishments, so soon as it shall be proved that the Church is constitutionally incompetent to this work, or so soon as it shall be shown by fair history that she has failed to do it. Upon what principle, we ask, “did the word of the Lord,” in the days even of Paul, “sound forth not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place,”²⁴1 Thes. 1:8 so that the gospel in the apostolic age was conveyed throughout and beyond the borders of the Roman empire? Upon what principle were the conquests of Christianity achieved during the first three centuries, and that too in the face of violent persecution, so that in the days of Constantine it had outgrown Paganism, and was chosen in preference to it as the religion of the State? We dismiss without remark the gratuitous assertion of Mr. Gladstone that:

“Christianity found its way up to thrones, incorporated itself in systems of law, and arrived at the summits of society by the miraculous impulses of its original propagation; whose vibrations had been measured no doubt with reference to the space they were to traverse.”²⁵Church and State, vol. I. p. 238.

When he shall substantiate by historical testimony the continuance of a miraculous power in the Church beyond the apostolic age and its perpetuation to the fourth century, we will stop to consider his deductions from so potent a fact. But no positiveness of assertion will stamp upon an unsupported conjecture the impress of historic truth. Upon what principle did Dr. Chalmers disprove his own allegations, when after a century of torpor, Christian people in Scotland waking up to this awful destitution, he succeeded in building nearly 200 Churches, and presented them to the Establishment? Upon what principle was the endowment of the Free Church achieved, whose glorious results entitle Dr. Chalmers and his coadjutors to be ranked with the Hendersons and Melvilles who fought, in earlier days, for Christ’s covenant and crown? By the magic of what principle were 800 Free Churches built almost in a day, with hundreds of manses and schoolhouses—to say nothing of a college with its appropriate furniture? What spring was touched when “from their deep poverty” a Christian people raised a sustentation fund sufficient to endow anew their exiled and persecuted Church? Surely there was a providence in selecting that man to demonstrate most fully the efficiency of voluntaryism, who had most belied it as a thing powerless and weak! It was the crowning glory of Chalmers’s life, that his last and sublimest acts should erase the words he did not wisely write.

But the issue now joined as to the practical efficiency of the two systems, admits of being decided by statistical facts. Let us see what supply the established Church of England has furnished for the growing religious wants of that country: and this Establishment, we may remark, unites all the conditions necessary to make the test a fair one. The English people are earnest, persevering, and full of enterprise; the State has boundless resources from which to draw; and the English Church is, by no means, deficient in the esprit de corps, requisite to carry forward a great extension scheme. The facts we shall present are taken from Mr. Noel’s recent work on the union of Church and State; and which, so far as we know, have been received without contradiction where, if untrue, they could be most easily disproved. As our object is to ascertain how far the English Establishment addresses itself to overtake with the Gospel the increasing population of the country, we select the two manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire; in which, from the nature of their employment, the population doubles itself in less than forty years.

In the district of Lancashire, embracing 1,224,708 souls, the State has built, since the year 1800, 25 Churches with 34,985 sittings: which, with 83 Churches having 93,918 sittings, built before 1800, make a total of 108 Churches with 128,903 sittings—the entire supply which is furnished by the State, and which brings the Gospel within reach of only one-tenth of the population. In the same district, however, there have been built, since 1800, by voluntary contributions, 92 Episcopal Churches with 92,345 sittings; also 472 Dissenting Chapels with 243,339 sittings; making a total of 564 Churches and Chapels with 335,684 sittings, built, since 1800, upon the voluntary principle. Add to them 96 Dissenting Chapels with 59,445 sittings, built before 1800, and we have the supply furnished by voluntaryism to be 660 Churches and Chapels, with 394,629 sittings; which would bring the Gospel within reach of one out of every three and a half of the whole population. The comparison then will stand thus: the State furnishes 108 Churches, accommodating 128,903 persons; voluntaryism furnishes 660 Churches, accommodating 394,629 persons: being an excess of the latter over the former of 552 Churches, seating 265,726 hearers. Setting over, however, to the credit of the Establishment, the 92 Episcopal Churches, the fruits of the voluntary principle within its pale, and balancing the Churches against the Chapels, there will still be an excess in favor of the latter of 368 Chapels with 81,536 sittings.

A similar result will attend an examination of the relative supply afforded by the two systems in the woolen district of Yorkshire, with a population of 844,563. For these souls the State has built, since the year 1800, 29 Churches, seating 31,526 persons; which added to 87 Churches with 72,784 sittings, built before 1800, make the supply, afforded by the State, to be 116 Churches with 104,310 sittings; according to which, the State gives the Gospel to one-eighth of the whole gross population. Upon the voluntary principle, there have been built, since 1800, 51 Episcopal Churches, accommodating 32,426 sitters, and 501 Dissenting Chapels with 216,448 sittings. The 116 Dissenting Chapels with 136,736 sittings, built before 1800, make the entire supply, furnished by individual zeal, to be 668 Churches, with 385,610 sittings—affording the Gospel to one out of every two and one-fifth of the gross population. That is to say, the State furnishes 116 Churches, reaching 104,310 of the people; voluntaryism furnishes 668 Churches, reaching 385,610 of the population—being an excess of the latter over the former of 552 Churches with 281,300 sittings. Setting over again to the credit of the Establishment, what the voluntary principle has achieved within its pale, and balancing the Churches against the Chapels, the excess in favor of the latter will still be 450 Chapels with 146,615 sittings. Taking the two districts together there will be an excess of 818 Chapels with 228,181 sittings, to be credited to the voluntary principle, over what is furnished by the established Church; and this result obtains, though we have not subtracted, as in strict justice should be done, the fruits of individual zeal within the pale of the establishment. Mr. Noel sums up the final result in the following language:

“If, by any sudden catastrophe, all the ministers and schools of the Establishment, in these manufacturing districts, were to vanish, nearly two-thirds of the evangelical instruction, now given to the people, would remain.”²⁶Union of Church and State, p. 268.

There is another light in which these facts should be viewed. It is a common argument in support of the Union, that an established Church can equalize the religious supply of the country, which cannot be done upon the opposite system. The State having a paternal oversight of the whole country, can appoint Ministers and erect Churches just where these are most needed, and where the people are the least able and willing to supply themselves; who must, in the nature of things, be neglected upon the voluntary principle, “whose general law,” Mr. Gladstone affirms, “is to provide for those who can pay for the provision.” Let us see how far actual facts bear out this a priori reasoning. In the three agricultural counties of Norfolk, Rutland, and Suffolk, with a gross population in 1831 of 705,756, the established Church stationed 1250 of her clergy; the Dissenters placed 352: while in the three manufacturing and civic counties of London and Middlesex, Lancashire and Yorkshire, with a gross population of 4,066,513, the established Church stationed 1298 ministers, and the Dissenters 1934. Thus it will appear that the State afforded to these divisions, respectively, about the same measure of supply, the difference between them being only 48; and this, notwithstanding the population in the manufacturing counties is nearly six times as large as in the agricultural. A Pastor is provided for each 564 persons in the one district, and for each 3132 in the other. The distribution of the Dissenting clergy is found to be far more equitable. The population of the manufacturing region is nearly six times that in the rural; and the Dissenting ministers are also nearly six times more numerous in the former than in the latter—the proportion in each case being about the same.

The conclusion to which we are brought by this survey of the achievements of voluntaryism, both in England and Scotland, as compared with those of the National Church, is so far from being unfavourable to the former, that if we were called upon to select a field in which the voluntary principle had more fully demonstrated its efficiency than in another, we would point to Britain, and be willing to stake the issue upon its triumphs there. However great its efficiency in this country may be—and we shall presently turn to this topic—it has been fettered there by restrictions, and has labored under burdens, which can never be imposed upon any single class here.

It will tend further to vindicate the voluntary principle from this charge so inconsiderately preferred, to ponder what it has accomplished in these United States of America; where, in Dr. Arnold’s judgment, “the evil spirit of Sectarianism has wrought his perfect work.”²⁷Principles of Church Reform, Miscel. Works, p. 270. This country, moreover, presents, on many accounts, as fair a test to the capacities of voluntaryism as any other upon the globe. Its action is here unimpeded by the counter-efforts of any opponent; it works upon a vast scale, having a continent to traverse; and a sufficient period of time has elapsed to develop somewhat largely its results. On the other hand, it has had obstacles of a peculiar nature to surmount. A sparse population stretching over an almost unlimited territory—its attention distracted by the multifarious objects which, in a new country, call for consideration—the partial resources which it can command among a people whose wealth has had no time to accumulate, and among whom it is constantly shifting hands—the multitude of sects which too often expend their strength in ungenerous rivalry among themselves, instead of concerting together to cover the land with the institutions of religion—the constant influx of foreigners, whose strange habits and jarring languages throw great impediments in the way of evangelical labors—the almost incredible rapidity with which the population is increasing, as well by the fecundity of the natives as by the immigration of strangers—the new territories thrown daily open, constantly enlarging the field of exertion, and carrying off the frontier when it has scarcely been reached—and the perpetual flow and change of the population, never “remaining in one stay,” but unsettling what has just been established—these are among the difficulties which press upon the Churches of Christ in this country, in their efforts to evangelize it. Yet, in the face of all these obstacles, an amount of supply has been furnished to its religious necessities, which, viewed in the aggregate, almost staggers belief. It is unnecessary to enter much into detail, since the facts lie around us, open to the inspection of every observer. A mere outline, which could be much more fully drawn, must suffice.

In 1844, when the population of these United States was estimated at eighteen and a half millions, there were no fewer than 16,682 ministers in the various Evangelical Churches alone, to supply it; not including the local preachers in the Methodist, nor the licentiates in the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches. This will afford an average of one minister to each 1100 souls; and under the instructions of this ministry it is estimated fifteen of the eighteen millions of the population were actually brought.²⁸Religion in America, by Dr. Baird, Book 6, ch. 17. Dr. Baird, from whom these statements are borrowed, estimates that not fewer than 950 Church edifices are annually erected by Protestant Evangelical denominations; which number will swell to 1100 annually, if the sanctuaries of Unitarians, Universalists, Romanists and others be included.²⁹Ibid, Concluding Summary. He further computes the annual expenditure for the support of ministers at more than five millions of dollars; and the annual outlay for Church building and incidental expenses, at more than two millions of dollars. If now we take into view the arrangements in each of these denominations, to raise up an educated ministry—to support Evangelists in frontier and destitute settlements—to disseminate, by presses and colporteurs, a religious and denominational literature—and to propagate religion in foreign parts, (for which last object a half million of dollars is annually raised,) we carry over another large item to the credit of the voluntary principle. Let it be remembered that three-fourths of the one hundred Colleges in the land, all the existing Theological Seminaries, and a vast multitude of schools, have, during the last half century, been endowed mainly by free-will contributions; and in view of all this the final estimate of Dr. Baird will not appear extravagant, that upon the voluntary principle eleven millions of dollars are annually realized to promote religion at home and abroad. It adds significance to these facts, too, to remember that those persons who freely contribute these sums to religious purposes, are also engaged in vast civil and commercial schemes, in order to develop the resources of a new country, and to build up to maturity and strength an infant nation. We confess to but little taste for statistics, and believe that at best they only approximate the truth. But leaving a wide margin for error in the many items which swell this aggregate, a general impression of power rests upon our minds; we begin to form some idea of that mighty principle, concealed from view, which moves so many arms over so large a circle of duty and enterprise. We are willing to commit this meager synopsis of facts without comment to the reader. It does not require to be enforced by argument. However much we may deplore the shortcomings of voluntaryism, if the only hope of a lost world is in a Church which is pensioned by the State, that hope is truly forlorn.

IV. The next defense of the union of Church and. State, more frequently suggested than elaborated, is its universality among all nations and through all periods of time. This universality is supposed to be the voice of nature, indicating the general sentiment of mankind in its favor; and the argument shelters itself under that famous aphorism of Aritotle’s: ὃ γὰρ πᾶσι δοκεῖ, τοῦτο εἶναι φαμέν· ὁ δ’ ἀναιρῶν ταύτην τὴν πίστιν, οὐ πάνυ πιστότερα ἔρει. The argument is, however, more specious than solid. This general consent is a strong presumption of truth, when it is shown to proceed from the unbiased judgment of men. If no extraneous influence has been at work, and each mind has been left to its free action, then a spontaneous agreement in any conclusion can only be explained upon the supposition that it is intuitively true. Obviously, however, the doctrine of an established Church cannot be ranked among the propositions that are self-evident; since it is not only denied, but as we have shown in the preceding section, most extensive operations are founded upon this denial. It has been maintained by Archaeologists, that the early founders of governments sought to draw respect to their authority and to perpetuate their power, by embedding their polity in the religious feelings and associations of their subjects. They claimed, for example, to be inspired of the national Deities—to be commissioned to the special work they undertook—and sought in this way to fence their institutions around with divine sanctions. For this end, they united the highest religious, with the highest civil, functions; the chief magistrate held in one hand the imperial sword, and in the other the sacrificial knife; and the whole worship of the nation was taken under the care of the State, which appropriated its revenues to the propagation of the national religion. We have, then, in the interposition of civil rulers, an extraneous influence to account for the origin of an Establishment—the State strives to make the religious nature of men the foundation upon which it shall build its power—and the National Church is but a part of the machinery by which it rules. Let it be remembered now, how much one government fashions itself after another, and it is easy to see how the first should become the mold into which succeeding ones should be cast and how upon the principle of association alone, the union of Church and State, once gaining foothold among nations, should be handed down in unbroken succession from the earliest times even to our own day.

From the most remote antiquity, governments have been chiefly despotic, and the governed have lived in abject submission: would it be wise to infer that the general sentiment of mankind declares for a state of bondage and repudiates freedom? Would it be conclusive in this case to reason from the imperfections of society, from grievances tolerated only because they cannot be abated, to a moral approbation of the same? Wherever, too, religion is involved, the presumption arising from general concurrence becomes materially impaired, if indeed it is not more frequently prima facie evidence of falsehood rather than of truth. The overwhelming majority of men in all past time have been “wholly given to idolatry,” rejoicing in the fictions of their own mythology more than in the truths of God; yet most certainly, there is but one God, who hath made the heavens and the earth. All men instinctively oppose the truth as it is in Jesus, the stupid Hottentot, and the subtle Hindoo, as well as the trained skeptic; does this universal opposition to the gospel create such a presumption of its falsehood, that it should at once be discredited? Ever since the fall, “the understanding is darkened,” and men do not receive or obey the truth. Because of our depravity, religion is always prone to lose its spirituality, and become a thing of forms, a moral institute, to be classed among, and compared with, the devices of men. When its true province is forgotten, it may be perverted to any degree whatever. Our conviction is that men have declared with such unanimity for an Established Church, because they have been ignorant, not more of the true nature of religion than of the true ends of government. This has ceased to be the soul’s commerce with God, and has become a mere bargain with priests; it has been robbed of its control over the conscience and affections, and addresses itself to the imagination, or still more sordidly, to the interests of man. It has exchanged its spiritual power over men’s hearts, and has sunk into a mere matter of human authority. Mr. Gladstone decides rightly, not to pursue the inductive argument for our conviction, since “the appeal is entered to a different tribunal.” A question of this magnitude must be decided, not by the doubtful history of past generations, but in accordance with the great principles it involves. If there be no teaching in God’s word which is authoritative, we must reason from the true nature of the two institutions, and from the ends they seek to compass. This ground we have already covered: from their nature, they can never coalesce; and their ends are such as each can attain alone in its proper sphere. To this presumptuous appeal, which would bind forever upon the world the errors of the past, we make a twofold answer: that we can find a first cause for the amalgamation of Church and State in the desire of the latter to build itself into the religious nature of man; and this union once established has been perpetuated by prescription and association. So that the alleged uniformity of action establishes no presumption of its propriety, nor can we interpret it as the voice of nature uttering only what is true. Again, we reply, that since mankind have conspired always to corrupt the true religion, the general favor manifested to a National Church originates the suspicion that this is only a device by which Christianity, through a treacherous alliance, is to be rendered powerless.

V. The advocates of the union draw an argument from the Scriptures, which divides itself into two branches the first is the example of the Hebrew Commonwealth, which is supposed to afford a justifying precedent; the second is an appeal to the prophecies relating to the millennial period.

We will dismiss this topic with but one or two cursory observations; both because we do not wish to overstep the limits of the reader’s patience, and because the field which it introduces is almost illimitable, as soon as we enter into details. In regard to the Jewish Theocracy, it could be easily shown that essential differences exist between it and any Church Establishment since known among men. The whole power, both civil and religious, vested exclusively in Jehovah—not merely in the general sense in which all power belongs to Him, but growing out of the peculiar relation in which He was pleased to assume that people to Himself. The State was simply the husk or shell thrown around the Church, singularly: constituted as that was; and the deduction from this economy is far more powerful in the hands of those who advocate the supremacy of the Church over the State, than in the hands of those who exalt the State to complete superintendency over the Church. It can be shown that the Jewish Kings had no jurisdiction over the Church—did not appropriate the revenues of the State to the support of the Priesthood—did not employ their power in exacting the tithes which Jehovah had made the peculium of the Levitical order—and had no agency either in appointing to, or in deposing from, religious functions. But omitting all considerations of this kind, it is a sufficient reply that this Dispensation was wholly extraordinary, appointed to fulfill a temporary office, and was distinctly abrogated by the Messiah at the period of His advent. The principle of an Ecclesiastico-political organization, if ever it was incorporated in the Jewish Economy, was then expressly canceled. He declares his kingdom to be henceforth not of this world—distinguishes between the things which are to be rendered unto Caesar, and the things to be rendered unto God—warns his servants to put the sword into its sheath—and teaches that the weapons of their warfare are not carnal, but spiritual. This unequivocal withdrawal of the Jewish Establishment, and this clear separation of his Church as entirely spiritual in its aims, revoke the grant, if indeed the Church ever possessed it, to ally itself with the civil power.

In relation to the Millennial Prophecies, it cannot be overlooked that the argument founded upon them assumes an exposition which is obstinately contended. The declarations that “Kings shall be nursing fathers, and Queens nursing mothers to the Church”—that she “shall suck the milk of the Gentiles”—and that “Kings shall minister unto her”—may mean simply that these persons shall become the subjects of Divine Grace, and bring the influence which station gives them in forwarding the cause of the Redeemer. Before they can establish any connection between civil governments and the Church of Christ, it must first be shown that this spiritual interpretation is void, and that these terms must be understood in their most full and literal extension. The argument drawn from the Savior’s personal advent and reign cannot be admitted, till this doctrine is itself incontrovertibly established. We say nothing now upon any of these points, sufficiently difficult and perplexing of themselves, without being entangled with the vexed question we are now discussing. It is enough for our purpose to say that an argument drawn from disputed premises, is rarely convincing and there can be no end of disputation, when the discussion is only removed from the inference, and warmly renewed upon the premises from which it is deduced. Granting, however, the prediction that “the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ” to be literally accomplished in the personal reign of the Savior, in which he will assume temporal as well as ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the nations that will be confessedly an extraordinary Dispensation, of which we can at present form no adequate conceptions. To Christ belong rightfully the kingdom and the glory; and if in His own person He shall visibly unite temporal sovereignty with Headship over the Church, we assuredly say Amen: but we can scarcely allow our opponents to reason backwards from a future and extraordinary Dispensation, to times and circumstances so essentially varying, as they are with us.

We bring to a close our discussion of this really complex and difficult subject. We have no new theory to project upon the relations of the State to the Church. Indeed all speculation is precluded by the very simplicity of our creed; which is that the two institutions should work on harmoniously, each in its own sphere doing its own work, and without thwarting the plans of either. The State protects her citizens in the enjoyment of their religious privileges; and the Church enjoins upon her members the Christian duty of reverence to the powers that be.” It is rather from those who seek to amalgamate these societies, than from us, that ingenuity must be expected. It is for them to frame theories on which to reconcile discordant materials—so to mingle the iron and the clay that the product shall not be “partly strong and partly weak.” The object which we proposed to ourselves was limited to a review of the schemes which have been invented for this end, and an analysis of the principles upon which these are constructed. There are some special objections urged against the voluntary scheme which we would be glad to examine in detail: but the limits of a review will not suffer the notice of more than two; and these we select, not so much for the purpose of refutation, as for salutary caution to those who boldly advocate the voluntary principle.

It has been said that the separation of the Church from the State tends to make the latter Atheistical. Lawgivers and magistrates inducted into office without religious tests will cast off all restraint, and the affairs of the nation be conducted upon the most infidel principles. The distinction is again overlooked between the nation and the State. The latter, as a unit, is incapable of religion, as we have endeavored to show; the former, as embracing individuals, may and should be Christian: Legislators and governors are under the same individual responsibility with other men; and in their public functions, as well as in their private relations, are bound to make God’s word a lamp to their feet and a light to their path. If laws unfriendly to religion are enacted, or if wise laws be unjustly administered, the guilt will be laid where it justly belongs. And if the people, from whom in free governments power flows, suffer their representatives to abuse a public trust—to employ the influence of their high station to demoralize the nation—they become accessories after the fact. It requires to be shown, whether the absence of religious tests tends so much to make the State Atheistical, as the requisition of them from unqualified persons, to make the State a hypocrite—and whether the results are not equally pernicious. It is certainly far more easy to debauch the consciences of men, and make them familiar with perjury and blasphemy, than to erase the fundamental ideas of religion from their minds. We deny, however, that it is the State’s province to be the organ or exponent of the religious convictions of the nation. We for example, are a Christian people, a Christian nation; the laws framed for our government respect us as such; and our rulers represent to some extent this religious element not indeed by formal, public, official acts, carrying out the religious opinions of their constituents, but in refraining from any legislation or government which shall compromit their religious character. Yet since the charge has been laid against the voluntary scheme, that without a National Church, the State tends to open disregard of all religion, let those who wish well to voluntaryism see that the charge may not be sustained. Let the effort be to leaven the whole mass of society with religious principles, for the obtaining a sound religious public opinion—which, more than tests and sacraments, will constrain public officers at least into a decent demeanour to the religion of Christ, and to the hearty recognition of it as the greatest of all the elements which go into the character of the nation.

PAGE 59

Again, it has been urged as the opprobrium of voluntaryism, that it secures no adequate support to the ministry. There is room, however, for the inquiry whether an Established Church does better. Taking the English Establishment for the comparison, we should say not; although it must be admitted that the Scotch Establishment, from the simplicity of its worship and the parity of the clergy, would present a more favorable case. The total net income of the English Establishment, according to Mr. Noel, was in 1836, £3,439,767: which, if equally distributed among the 12,923 clergy, would yield the very fair average of £266. But when it is remembered that the incomes of Bishops and Archbishops range from £4,000 to £15,000, that a large sum goes to the Cathedrals, and that the benefices vary exceedingly in value, the statement of Mr. Noel is not surprising:

“1619 Clergymen receive £1,319,650; 10,112 Clergymen receive £1,155,030: that is, 1619 Clergymen receive more from the State than 10,112, who do nearly all the work. 1619 Clergymen who have got the prizes of the Establishment, have an average of £808; and 10,112 of the working Clergy have an average of £114. The 1619 have salaries seven times larger than their more laborious brethren.”³⁰Union of Church and State, p. 287.

If the voluntary principle does not ensure equality of support, or even a fair distribution, surely it is not for Establishments to throw the stone. In our own country, many causes conspire to render ministerial support generally too inadequate. We are certainly far from censuring those laborious and self-sacrificing men who, yielding to a controlling necessity, “labor with their own hands that they may not be chargeable upon any;” yet it is a reproach to the Church, when her ministers are laid under such necessity; and a grievous loss to her when their thoughts and time and strength must be directed from their holy vocation to be occupied with tables. It becomes us, when boasting of the fruits of voluntaryism, to remember this scandal yet resting against it. May the time soon come when it shall be manifested that no better treasury exists than the hearts of God’s people, and no richer endowment for the Church than the Grace to consecrate her substance to Him who hath purchased her with His own blood!

Finally, the controversy now pending between Free and Established Churches, we conscientiously believe, is remitted to Christian denominations in this country for ultimate decision; but it must be closed not by words or arguments, but with the higher demonstration of incontestable facts. Never, since Apostolic times, was a wider territory afforded for the trial of the energies of voluntaryism; and never a period in which it was put to a severer test than the present. It must not only fill the interstices still occurring in the older settlements; but it must penetrate on the South the fields which a few years have opened to the very borders of Mexico—it must traverse the Northwestern territories, rapidly filling with a hardy population, and destined shortly to become an integral portion of this confederacy—it must follow the shoals of emigrants into the new regions of California, where an empire has sprung up almost literally in a night. All this it must do, and that at once. The Evangelist with his roving commission, the colporteur with his printed message, and the Christian Pastor with his Church, must be apace with the most forward of the pioneers, who shall fell the primeval forest in the most remote sections of this land. If not, the advocates of a National Church will be furnished a triumph by our supineness which their own achievements have failed to win. It were a fatal mistake to suppose that the voluntary principle has already accomplished such results amongst us as shall forever vindicate it from the charge of incompetency. This problem is yet only in the course of demonstration: we are but in the midst of the high argument. Should the various Evangelical denominations relax at this point their exertions—should they hereafter fail to overtake our growing population, and extending territory, with Gospel privileges, barbarism and irreligion will sooner or later flow back upon us from the frontiers of our land, and with its fearful tide sweep away the institutions which seem to be firmly established. If indeed in the Providence of God we have been appointed the guardians of the voluntary scheme, we can only discharge our sacred trust by energetic efforts to cover this continent, even to its extremities, with the ordinances of religion. Upon this career, we are happy to know the Church of Christ has already entered. We cherish with delight the conviction that the largeness of spirit with which she has entered upon these Evangelical labors, is but the earnest of still more liberal endeavors; and that the success already attained is only the pledge of the final triumph of voluntaryism.