There are enlightened and religious persons who think it would be a great advantage to religion if the present system of dogmatical theological study in America were broken up. It might be so, if it were sure to be reconstituted upon better principles, and if it were not done for the purpose of supplying the pulpit with men who might be even less fit for their office than they are now. But there is no prospect of such a breaking up at present; and, I am afraid, as little of any great improvement in the principles of research. Though there are differences arising about creeds; though there are schisms within the walls of churches and of colleges, and trials for heresy before synods and assemblies, which promise a more or less speedy relaxation of the bonds of creeds, and the tyranny of church government, there is no near prospect of theological science being left as free as other kinds. There is no near prospect of evidence on the most important of all subjects being consigned to the heaven-made laws of the human mind. There is no near prospect of inquiry being left to work out its results, without any prior specification, under penalty, of what they must be. There is no near prospect of the clergy having such faith in the religion they profess as to leave it to the administration of Him who sent it, free from their pernicious and arrogant protection.
If other science had its results mixed up with hope and fear, its pursuit watched over by tyranny, and divergence from old opinions punished by opprobrium, the world, instead of being "an immense whispering gallery, where the faintest accent of science is heard throughout every civilised country as soon as uttered," would be a Babel; where all utterance would be vociferation, and life one interminable quarrel. It would be an extreme exemplification of the principle of making convictions the object of moral approbation and disapprobation. As it is, though natural philosophers sometimes fall out, yet there is a practical admission of the right of free research, and of the innocence of arriving, by strict fidelity, at any conclusions whatever, in natural science. The consequence is that, instead of men being imprisoned for their discoveries, and made to do penance for the benefits they confer on the community, science proceeds expeditiously and joyously, under the hands of intent workers, mutually aiding and congratulating, while society gratefully accepts the results, and adopts the knowledge evolved, as it becomes necessarily and regularly popularised.
Whenever moral science shall be undertaken, and religious science emancipated, such will be the harmonious progress of each, and the christian religion will be anew revealed to men. Meantime, the religious world is in one aspect like an inquisition; in another, like a Babel. The religious world: not by any means the intercourse of all religious persons. Some of the most religious persons are quite out of the religious world; voluntarily retreating from it that they may retain their reverence; or driven from it, because they are faithful to convictions which are prescribed to them only by God, without the sanction of man.
Is it thus that religion should be followed and professed in a democratic republic? Does it carry with it any dispensation from democratic principles? any authority for despotism in this one particular? any denial of human equality? any sanction of human authority over reason and conscience? Is it not rather "the root of all democracy; the highest fact in the Rights of Man?" America has left it to the Old World to fortify Christianity by establishments, and has triumphantly shown that a great nation may be trusted to its religious instincts to provide for its religious wants. In order to the complete following out of her principles, she must leave religious speculation and pursuit of knowledge and peace as open as any other; and beware of making the ascertainments of science an occasion for the oppression of a single individual in fortune, name, or natural inheritance of spiritual liberty.
CHAPTER II. SPIRIT OF RELIGION.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
Paul the Apostle.
"Hands full of hearty labours: pains that pay
And prize themselves—do much that more they may.