It does not involve a cynical view of mankind to decide that where the occasion of sin abounds wickedness will increase and prove destructive, unless adequate means are taken to preserve the purity of a nation.
This restraining influence in the history of nations hitherto has been religion, which is supposed to furnish motives and to supply the strength and means of combating these evil tendencies, and of defining and consolidating public morality.
The religion under profession of which the older portions of the republic developed was professedly Christian and retained much of the traditional morality of the middle ages. There was no particular form of Protestantism which succeeded in impressing itself permanently upon the growing republic, although some connection of church and state was universally recognized in the early State constitutions. The rigid forms of Puritanism and Quakerism were well calculated to preserve frugality and simplicity of life as long as they could be maintained in rigidity. But no system of mere forms or external restraint could suffice for the direction of a civilization which, still in its infancy, presents so much richness and luxuriance of growth. Neither the austerity of the Roundhead nor
the dignity of the Cavalier could hope to remain as the type upon which the American character was to be moulded. The external habiliments of the early generations were bound to disappear, as they have disappeared. But their principles—i.e., the beliefs of Protestantism—were to remain and to form the intellect and conscience of the American people. However great the influence of Southern statesmen upon our external constitution, the New England mind has wrought most powerfully upon the popular sentiment of the country. This action has been manifold.
The stock in trade, to use a homely comparison, with which Protestantism assumed its duty of providing for the moral and intellectual necessities of the American people was contained in the principles of the so-called Reformation.
In addition to the theory of private judgment, which was retained, with the utmost inconsistency, the early religion of this country reposed upon two fundamental and mischievous errors which were inherited from the authors of the Reformation. These were the heresies of justification by faith alone and the total depravity of human nature. If any proof were wanting of the strength and permanence of the religious instinct in man, it would appear in the fact that such monstrous delusions could so long receive the assent of those who professed at the same time perfect freedom of belief. These disgusting caricatures of Christian dogma have almost lost their control over human reason, and will remain only to demonstrate the needs of man and his weakness when acting in abnormal ways and under false traditions. But the fruit which they have borne will not speedily perish. After crystallizing
into a system and founding institutions for perpetuating its growth, the Calvinism of New England assumed all the proportions and manners of an established sect. The preachers were intellectually well worthy of the position which they enjoyed. Great eloquence, rich thought, and all the scholarship of which they were possessed were wasted in elaborate sermons proving, or attempting to prove, their dark and malignant creed. A large mass of the people, however, not attracted by the airs of Calvinism, were repelled by the heavy and metaphysical style of the Calvinistic pulpit.
Before the separation of the colonies from the mother country New England Calvinism had become sufficiently dry and devoid of sentiment to prepare the way for a more emotional religion. Thousands of eager souls drank in the enthusiasm of Asbury, Coke, and the other apostles of Wesleyanism. The founders of Methodism in America, though obliged to adopt some articles of faith as distinctive of their organization, owed their success to the fact that, discarding all reasoning, they appealed to religious emotion, and were mainly instrumental in founding that school of theology whose doctrine is that it matters little what one does or believes, provided one feels right.
Emotionalism has run its course and dies out in the Hippodrome, whither the official teachers of evangelicalism have led their congregations to receive from the ministrations of two illiterate laymen that spiritual stimulant which can no longer be obtained from educated preachers in the fashionable meeting-house.
While the ancient organizations of Puritanism continued, with more