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Turkey, Japan, and China, as really as for those of these United States. Apply the theory in China, and it means State power employed to sustain, propagate, and enforce Buddhism and idolatry. Apply it in Turkey, and it means the same power thus employed in the interests of Mohammedanism. It so happens that the world is fruitful in religious systems; and, unless we adopt the doctrine that all these systems are equally true or equally false, the theory, as thus applied, would lead to the most opposite results and entirely confound the distinction between the true and the false. If when applied to Christianity it would promote the truth, it would, with equal certainty, promote the grossest superstition and error when applied to Paganism. A change of circumstances often gives one a view of things otherwise not so readily taken.

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Let us then suppose a Protestant to transfer his residence to China and to become subject to the government of that country. we will further suppose, he demanding that religion shall be included in the educational régime of the public schools, and was horrified at the idea of not having King James's version of the Sacred Scriptures read in these schools for religious purposes. How does he reason when the principle comes to be applied to him in China? The Chinese Emperor agrees with him in his principle, and proposes to tax him, not to support and teach Protestant Christianity, but to sup

port and teach the religion of China, which he regards as an abominable idolatry. This would probably open his eyes to the nature of his own doctrine. Yet, if it is the right of one government to enter the province of things spiritual, and tax the people to support and propagate religion, then it is the right of all governments to do so.

The principle, if valid at all, is just as valid for Paganism as it is for Christianity, for idolatry as it is for the purest worship, for the most superstitious form of Roman Catholicism as it is for the most enlightened Protestantism. No Protestant would ask for its application in any other than a Protestant country; and this is a good reason why he should not ask for it there. If it is not good in China or Catholic Spain, it is no better in these United States. The principle is the same, no matter to what religion it is applied, or whether Pagans or Christians, Catholics or Protestants form the majority of the people. It is the principle of State religion, good everywhere or good nowhere. If Protestants were in the minority in this country and Catholics in the majority, the former certainly would not advocate a public school system, to be supported by general taxation, in which Catholicism should be taught.

The conclusion from this line of thought is that civil government, though the best possible machinery to secure certain ends connected with our temporal interests, is not a contrivance adapted to

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secure the ends that relate to our spiritual welfare. Surely," says Macaulay, "if experience shows that a certain machine, when used to produce a certain effect, does not produce that effect once in a thousand times, but produces in the vast majority of cases an effect directly contrary, we cannot be wrong in saying it is not a machine of which the principal end is to be so used."

The learned essayist might justly have said that it is not a machine properly adapted to this end at all. The notorious and world-wide failures of civil government to make itself useful in the department of things spiritual, when attempting to manage and conduct them, furnish the most complete demonstration that, however useful it may be elsewhere, it is not suited to this purpose. A sledge-hammer is a very good instrument with which to break a rock, but a very poor tool with which to mend a watch or perform a delicate operation in surgery. So civil government is a very good agency within certain limits and for certain objects; but beyond these limits and objects it has no function to perform, and when its powers are extended beyond them they are found in practice to be immensely more injurious than beneficial to the very interests they seek to serve.

Mr. Madison was right when he said: "Religion is not within the purview of human government." He was right again when he said: " Religion is essentially distinct from human government and ex

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empt from its cognizance. A connection between them is injurious to both. There are causes in the human breast which insure the perpetuity of religion without the aid of law." In a letter addressed to Gov. Livingston, July 10th, 1822, he further said: "I observe with particular pleasure the view you have taken of the immunity of religion from civil government in every case where it does not trespass on private rights or the public peace. This has always been a favorite doctrine with me." He certainly was not an atheist or a hater of religion; but was a profound thinker, who did more than any other man in framing the Constitution of the United States, and as such he saw that it was best for the State, and best for religion, that the two should be kept absolutely independent and distinct.

The American people have only to apply the principle avowed by Mr. Madison to our public schools, and this would be the end of the whole discussion on the subject. The conclusion would be that, as a State agency to attain certain temporal ends, the public school has nothing to do with religion, and religion nothing to do with it. The government employing it has no religion to teach, not being a government for Christians any more than for Deists, or for Protestants any more than for Catholics. It is not its business, as a government, to affirm or deny, to teach or support any religious system.

XII.

THE POLITICAL VALUE OF RELIGION.

Judge Hagans, of the Supreme Court of Cincinnati, in delivering his opinion in the case of Minor and others vs. The Board of Education of Cincinnati and others, said: "In a word, it is the political value of religion, morality, and knowledge which the State proposes to secure for its varied purposes, and that only." This utterance was preceded by an extended quotation from an article by Dr. Seelye, which appeared in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. XIII, No. 52. In this article Dr. Seelye says that "the State has its own end," and that it "uses religion as a means to this end; but religion itself is never an end with the State. Everything relating to the moral and religious life of its subjects is of interest to the State only so far as the State can use it to its own ends." Again he says: Again he says: "With the State religion is a means." He says again: "There are temporal and earthly interests for the individual, and it is to subserve these that there is a State, a community, among men. These interests are undoubtedly more perfectly secured through the agency of some religion, and hence the proper and necessary connection of religion with the State. But in this connection religion is ever the serv

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