There can be no further narrowing than this. Any account of religion which restricts it within the boundaries of any system, which connects it with any mode of belief, which implicates it with hope of reward or fear of punishment, is low and injurious, and debases religion into superstition.
The Christian religion is specified as being the highest fact in the rights of man from its embodying (with all the rest) the principle of natural religion—that religion is at once an individual, an universal, and an equal concern. In it may be found a sanction of all just claims of political and social equality; for it proclaims, now in music and now in thunder,—it blazons, now in sunshine and now in lightning,—the fact of the natural equality of men. In giving forth this as its grand doctrine, it is indeed "the root of all democracy;" the root of the maxim (among others) that among the inalienable rights of all men are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The democracy of America is planted down deep into the christian religion; into its principles, which it has in common with natural religion, and which it vivifies and illumines, but does not alter.
How does the existing state of religion accord with the promise of its birth? In a country which professes to secure to every man the pursuit of happiness in his own way, what is the state of his liberty in the most private and individual of all concerns? How carefully are all men and women left free from interference in following up their own aspirations after the Infinite, in realising their own ideas of perfection, in bringing into harmonious action the functions of their spirits, as infinitely diversified as the expression of their features?
The absence of such diversity is the first striking fact which presents itself on the institution of such an inquiry. If there were no constraint,—no social reward or penalty,—such an approach to uniformity of profession could not exist as is seen in the United States. In a society where speculation and profession were left perfectly free, as included among the inalienable rights of man, there would be many speculative (though probably extremely few practical) atheists: there would be an adoption by many of the principles of natural religion, otherwise than in and through Christianity: and Christianity would be adopted in modes as various as the minds by which it would be recognised. Instead of this, we find laws framed against speculative atheists: opprobrium directed upon such as embrace natural religion otherwise than through Christianity: and a yet more bitter oppression exercised by those who view Christianity in one way, over those who regard it in another. A religious young christian legislator was pitied, blamed, and traduced in Boston, last year, by clergymen, lawyers, and professors of a college, for endeavouring to obtain a repeal of the law under which the testimony of speculative atheists is rejected in courts of justice: Quakers (calling themselves Friends) excommunicate each other: Presbyterian clergymen preach hatred to Catholics: a convent is burnt, and the nuns are banished from the neighbourhood: and Episcopalian clergymen claim credit for admitting Unitarians to sit in committees for public objects! As might be expected under such an infringement of the principle of securing to every man the pursuit of happiness in his own way, there is no such endless diversity in the action of minds, and utterance of tongues, as nature and fidelity to truth peremptorily demand. Truth is deprived of the irrefragable testimony which would be afforded by whatever agreement might arise amidst this diversity: religion is insulted and scandalised by nominal adherence and hypocritical advocacy. There are many ways of professing Christianity in the United States: but there are few, very few men, whether speculative or thoughtless, whether studious or ignorant, whether reverent or indifferent, whether sober or profligate, whether disinterested or worldly, who do not carefully profess Christianity, in some form or another. This, as men are made, is unnatural. Society presents no faithful mirror of the religious perspective of the human mind.
It may be asked whether this is not true of the Old World also. It is. But the society of the Old World has not yet grasped in practice any one fundamental democratic principle: and the few who govern the many have not yet perceived that religion is "the root of all democracy:" they are so far from it that they are still upholding an established form of religion; in which a particular mode of belief is enforced upon minds by the imposition of virtual rewards and punishments. The Americans have long taken higher ground; repudiating establishments, and professing to leave religion free. They must be judged by their own principles, and not by the example of societies whose errors they have practically denounced by their adoption of the Voluntary Principle.
The almost universal profession in America of the adoption of Christianity,—this profession by many whose habits of thought, and others whose habits of living forbid the supposition that it is the religion of their individual intellects and affections, compels the inquiry what sort of Christianity it is that is professed, and how it is come by. There is no evading the conviction that it is to a vast extent a monstrous superstition that is thus embraced by the tyrant, the profligate, the worldling, the bigot, the coward, and the slave; a superstition which offers little molestation to their vices, little rectification to their errors; a superstition which is but the spurious offspring of that divine Christianity which "is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the Rights of Man." That so many of the meek, pure, disinterested, free, and brave, make the same profession, proves only that they penetrate to religion through superstition; or that they cast away unconsciously the superstition with which their spirits have no affinity, and accept such truth as all superstition must include in order to live.
The only test by which religion and superstition can be ultimately tried is that with which they co-exist. "By their fruits ye shall know them."
The Presbyterian body is a very large one; the total number in communion, according to the minutes of the General Assembly for 1834, being then 247,964. New England contains a very small, and the south and west a very large, proportion of the body. Some of the most noble of the abolitionists of the north are Presbyterians; and from the lips and pens of Presbyterians in the south, come some of the defences of slavery which evince the deepest depravity of principle and feeling. This is only another proof, added to the million, that religion comes out of morals. In the words of a pure moralist,[29] "Morality is usually said to depend upon religion; but this is said in that low sense in which outward conduct is considered as morality. In that higher sense in which morality denotes sentiment, it is more exactly true to say, that religion depends on morality, and springs from it. Virtue is not the conformity of outward actions to a rule; nor is religion the fear of punishment, or the hope of reward. Virtue is the state of a just, prudent, benevolent, firm, and temperate mind. Religion is the whole of those sentiments which such a mind feels towards an infinitely perfect being." With these views, we may account for the different morality of the Presbyterians of the south from that of such of the friends of the slave in the north as are of the same communion. Of the Presbyterian, as well as other clergy of the south, some are even planters, superintending the toils of their slaves, and making purchases, or effecting sales in the slave-markets, during the week, and preaching on Sundays whatever they can devise that is least contradictory to their daily practice. I watched closely the preaching in the south,—that of all denominations,—to see what could be made of Christianity, "the highest fact in the Rights of Man," in such a region. I found the stricter religionists preaching reward and punishment in connexion with modes of belief, and hatred to the Catholics. I found the more philosophical preaching for or against materialism, and diverging to phrenology. I found the more quiet and "gentlemanly" preaching harmless abstractions,—the four seasons, the attributes of the Deity, prosperity and adversity, &c. I heard one clergyman, who always goes out of the room when the subject of negro emancipation is mentioned, or when slavery is found fault with, preach in a southern city against following a multitude to do evil. I heard one noble religious discourse from the Rev. Joel Parker, a Presbyterian clergyman, of New Orleans; but except that one, I never heard any available reference made to the grand truths of religion, or principles of morals. The great principles which regard the three relations to God, man, and self,—striving after perfection, mutual justice and charity, and christian liberty,—were never touched upon.—Meantime, the clergy were pretending to find express sanctions of slavery in the Bible; and putting words to this purpose into the mouths of public men, who do not profess to remember the existence of the Bible in any other connexion. The clergy were boasting at public meetings, that there was not a periodical south of the Potomac which did not advocate slavery; and some were even setting up a magazine, whose "fundamental principle is, that man ought to be the property of man." The clergy, who were to be sent as delegates to the General Assembly, were receiving instructions to leave the room, if the subject of slavery was mentioned; and to propose the cessation of the practice of praying for slaves. At the same time, the wife of a clergyman called upon me to admire the benevolent toils of a friend, who had been "putting up 4000 weight of pork" for her slave household: and another lady, kindly and religiously disposed, told me what pains she took on Sunday mornings to teach her slaves, by word of mouth, as much of Christianity as was good for them. When I pressed her on the point as to why they were to have Christianity and not the alphabet, and desired to know under what authority she dared to keep from them knowledge, which God has shed abroad for all, as freely as the the air and sunshine, I found that the idea was wholly new to her: nothing that she had heard in church, or out of it, from any of the Christians among whom she lived, had awakened the suspicion that she was robbing her brethren of their birth-right. The religion of the south strictly accords with the morals of the south. There is much that is gentle, merciful, and generous: much among the suffering women that is patient, heroic, and inspiring meek resignation. Among these victims, there is faith, hope, and charity. But Christianity is severed from its radical principles of justice and liberty; and it will have to be cast out as a rotten branch.
A southern clergyman mentioned to me, obviously with difficulty and pain, that though he was as happily placed as a minister could be, treated with friendliness and generosity by his people, and so cherished as to show that they were satisfied, he had one trouble. During all the years of his ministry, no token had reached him that he had religiously impressed their minds, more or less. They met regularly and decorously on Sundays, and departed quietly, and there was an end. He did not know that any one discourse had affected them more than any other; and no opportunity was offered him of witnessing any religious emotion among them whatever.—Another, an Unitarian clergyman of the south, was known to lament the appearance of Dr. Channing's work on slavery, "the cause was going on so well before!" "The cause going on!" exclaimed another Unitarian clergyman in the north; "what should the ship go on for, when they have thrown both captain and cargo overboard?"