"Religion, religion!" is the cry of universal man everywhere, at all times, except in some day of awful extremity or shameful degradation. Religion, to restrain or crown man's ambition. Religion, to sustain or support us in our griefs, whether referring to body or soul. Let not policy the most strong, the most just, flatter itself that it can effect this without religion. The greater and more extensive the social movement, the less able is it to direct tottering humanity. A higher power than any on earth is needed, a longer prospect than that of this life. God and eternity are necessary.
We require harmony also and agreement between religion and policy. Called to act on the same individual, and as a final attempt for the same result, how can they work together unless possessing a common basis of thought, sentiments, and designs? Whatever distance may intervene, there is an intimate connection between the earthly and religious ideas of men, between their desires for time and those for eternity. Did incoherence and contradiction alone exist, were our affairs, opinions, and hopes here completely estranged from those beyond this world, were religion capable only of improving and sustaining our actual life and society, their ideas, works, institutions and manners, far from serving the cause of, and mutually assisting each other would reciprocally fetter and weaken one another. The world would jest at piety, piety would take offence at the world, and that which should be upon earth the source of order and peace would become a fresh spring of anarchy and war.
And let neither religion or policy be alarmed about its independence and dignity. I do not wish that either should purchase by cowardly concession or costly sacrifice the harmony which ought to prevail between them. On the contrary, I wish they should on all occasions act according to the pure truth of things, and accomplish together their special and peculiar mission.
Clever men have looked upon religion as a source of order, a sort of social police, a useful and even indispensable matter, but otherwise without intrinsic value or any real and definite importance to the individual, unless to afford a chimerical satisfaction to certain weaknesses of the human mind and heart. Thence arises a superficial and hypocritical respect, which barely covers a disdainful coldness ill-calculated to resist any prolonged trial, which humiliates religion if she is content with it, or otherwise irritates and misleads her.
Great and religious men have in their turn looked on the world and the life of the world, either generally or at certain periods, as an evil in itself, an essential obstacle to the empire of divine laws, and to the accomplishment of our moral destiny. Hence the follies of ascetics and sectarians; hence, too, theocratic pretensions, pitiable mistakes of the spirit of religion, which has thus entered into hostility with human society, wishing now to flee from it, now to subdue it.
The errors on both sides are great and dangerous. Religious creeds seek to solve the fundamental problems of our nature and individual destiny. That is their first and chief design, greater even in their eyes than the maintenance of order in society. For this reason, and for this reason especially, respect is due to them; they deal with that which is most inward, most powerful, and most noble in man. And the policy which does not discern these facts, or discerning does not respectfully bow before them, shows itself futile, ignorant of the nature of man, incapable of guiding him at moments of importance.
On the other hand, this earth is not a place of banishment where man lives an exile. Society is not a scene of perdition, which a man must go through with disgust and terror. The earth is man's first country; God has placed him here. Society is the natural condition of man; God has made it for him. This world and social life do not bound our destiny; but it is in this world and by this social life that our destiny is begun and developed. We owe to society our assistance, given affectionately and respectfully, whatever the form of its organisation and the difficulties of our task. These forms and difficulties change with places and times, but they possess only a secondary importance, and make no change in the general condition or fundamental duty of man.