An ignorant worship of God is one which knows not what to believe concerning him, or one which is unable to state what it does believe; or, further, one which can give no conclusive reason for believing anything. But, outside the Catholic Church, there is no religious body which can tell precisely what it ought to believe, or precisely what it does believe, or precisely why it ought to believe anything. Again, an irrational belief in God is one which recognizes his existence, and, at the same time, denies his attributes. For instance, it is an irrational belief in God, which denies his wisdom; which asserts, that he has not chosen means adequate to accomplish his ends; which represents him, when he has made a revelation to man, as leaving his divine truth in scattered and mysterious writings in an obscure language, requiring men to find them, collect them, and believe their true meaning in order to be saved; or which fancies that reading daily a few pages from these writings, to little children, will be sufficient to prepare them for the duties of life. It is an irrational belief in God which represents him as immoral, as creating man simply to damn him, or, which denies his justice, by wickedly imagining that he will not punish oppression and calumny and those who sow discord in the midst of a free and happy people.
Here again we agree with the President in denouncing such impiety, and in predicting that, if the liberties and institutions of this republic are soon to be jeopardized, it will be by irreverence towards God and the contempt of charity and justice towards men, ever practised by this “ignorant and irrational worship of the supreme Deity.”
Another item of danger which the President foresees in the near future is “ignorance.” Here, again we find him sounding the note of warning, to which we have always given voice. His Excellency says: “In a republic like ours, … where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign, the people, should foster intelligence—that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation.” The liberties of this republic will not be maintained, we say, by an ignorant, debauched, and corrupted generation. Our common people must be educated. They must possess “that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation.” They must know something more than simply how to read and write and “cipher.” Nor will it be sufficient, to add to this a knowledge of music. They must have a sound and thorough moral training. Their conscientious convictions must be grounded on truth daily taught and daily enforced. They must be daily taught to control their passions; they must be taught honesty, and be required to give back that which is unjustly gotten. They must be taught the true purpose of life.
But this training, as the President affirms, belongs not to the state, but to the “family altar and the church.” Either assist all families and all churches, or else encourage them to help themselves. These are our sentiments. But when sectarian bigotry has gotten hold of a system of the falsely so-called “common schools,” and with obstinate purpose, and clamorous intensity and ever-swelling declamation, manifests its resolve to maintain this system, even though it conflicts with the conscientious rights of millions of the people of our country; when, further, it is determined to force a large minority to accept this state of things, or to go without instruction, we, as American citizens, denounce the system as tyrannous; in the full sense of the word, as a reckless and immoral oppression. We assert that those who uphold it, do not desire intelligence, but prefer ignorance; that their aim is not to promote knowledge, but to destroy the religious convictions of our children, and to keep us from growing in the land. We affirm that such self-delusion originates in ignorance, is perpetuated by ignorance, tends to still deeper degradation of ignorance; and we predict that it will bring forth the fruits of ignorance, not only in morality, but in the lower sciences.
We, for our part, will never relax our efforts to show up the dishonesty of this party; we will never withdraw our protest, until justice has been done; and knowing to what lengths men can go when they start without principle, we fully share in the alarm of our chief magistrate, as to the danger of “ignorance.” Have we not, therefore, reason to hope that, in the midst of the struggle, which his sagacious mind perceives to be at hand, we shall find him on the side of patriotism and intelligence, with all true Americans, against that “superstition” and “ignorance,” whose aim is to destroy the “security of unfettered religious sentiments and equal rights” of his fellow-citizens?
There is another item of the future contest, which, according to our President, is
“Ambition.” What is ambition?
A man has been elected to the highest office in the gift of a free people, the limits of which have been fixed by a custom handed down by the fathers of the nation, and which, to the minds of true patriots, has the force of law. When such a trust does not satisfy the honored recipient, and he, yielding to personal motives, strains every nerve, and seeks by every means at his command, to break down all barriers to continuation of power, thereby abusing the dignity of his post and the confidence of the people—that is ambition.
We do not fully share the apprehension with which the President foresees this threat to the “near future” of our national welfare. But if it be true, we fully agree with him when he says: “Now, the centennial year of our national existence, I believe, is a good time to begin the work of strengthening the foundations of the structure commenced by our patriotic forefathers one hundred years ago at Lexington.”