known and clearly understood idea in the dark ages. It was every where present. It held a fearful rule. It grasped universal life. It called the thunder of other worlds to its aid. At the Reformation, we only see the last and successful struggle of man to escape from it. Many had been his strong but unavailing attempts. Since then, it has not formally subsisted among Protestant people. They have shaken off the intolerable yoke. It is a tyranny passed away. Education can never be brought again beneath its bigoted and fierce control. Endeavour after endeavour may be made: but it must be impotent. The Spiritual power, as a ghostly instrument of oppression over the souls of men, has ceased. They must be as foolish as they are wicked, who can hope to revive it. Religion will only the more gain its proper influence, and her ministers stand upon their just ascendancy.

Nationalism will no more be the decoy. What mischief has the dream already done! National education, in the sense of that watchword which the oppressors of mankind love to interchange, this country can never brook. Its spirit, its character, its free institutions, are not the stems for that bitter graft. Such machinery may consist with slaves, but not with its sons. Liberty is their glory and their being. Darkness conceals all, a little light discovers only a little truth, but the full day exposes each diversity of things. various opinions and feelings are but as the prismatic decomposition of our intellectual and moral light. We

Our

ask not the uniformity of dull ignorance: the monotony of rigid obsequiousness. Nationalism! It is nothing! The Nation! It is every thing! Let the leaven work in all parts. Let the light kindle from all directions. But that freedom which is our birthright, our fathers' legacy, our children's hope,--most needed in education,-shall not be immolated on the altar of such an idol-shade!

There are to be found many champions of general liberty, who, in other times, would have agreed in these opinions. They, however, think that now they see an end of the threatened danger. Their confidence is in civil liberty. They cannot fear any result of religious domination so long as we retain our free institutions. They laugh all our anxieties to scorn. Knowledge defies superstition, and the security of political rights, of consequence and of necessity, seals those still more sacred. So they reason. Thus they would quell our fears. But we must be suffered to avow most opposite conclusions.

It is an anomaly, which thrusts itself upon the consideration of mankind, that the same people may not be equally impressed with the value of civil and of religious liberty. An indifferent observer, a superficial thinker, might have supposed that these could not be disjoined. Shall the patriot stand forth to brand some "raiser of taxes," some innovator on the laws of the commonwealth touching property and exchange, and leave in his dark recess the tyrant of the soul? It is

When

most possible that the less outrage shall be resented, and that the greater shall be made a boast. South America threw off the Spanish Yoke,-when her republics seemed to glow with the spirit of the purest freedom,-when the wrongs of Montezuma were promised their just redress,-intolerance was made the exception, and all liberty of religious opinion was proscribed. In Spain herself there rose a heroic band, generous, resolved, fierce as her torrents, entrenched as her hills, but the Bible must be excluded and the gospel suppressed. The priest retained his power, and superstition upheld its reign. Wherever there is the struggle for constitutional independence throughout present Europe, little of the claims of enlightened conscience is enforced. Men are in earnest about all besides. Against imposts, restrictions, imprisonments, mulcts, loudly will they plead. Jealously they watch every encroachment, firmly they repel every attack. The clank of chains jars their inward sense. All the bonds of slavery they indignantly denounce. But an Inquisition, and its familiars, they can pass without disgust. They can abandon man to spiritual despotism. The Barons of Runnymede extorted no charter, struck no blow, for private judgment and individual faith. The hardy, self-armed, peasantry of Helvetia and Tyrol asked but the liberty, defended but the right, to roam their mountain-sides, and delivered up their soul to the most fanatical debasement. And what is the struggle of Switzerland at the present mo

ment? It has its pretexts and its masks.

But it is in reality a determination to extirpate all religious liberty. The revolutions of its Protestant Cantons are all aimed at this. Intolerance is carried to its utmost extent. The very parties who have climbed to power on the most popular grounds, resolve that the Established Church shall exist alone. All other religious worship is forbidden. Even the liberty of the authorised clergy is cruelly shackled. They are interdicted the holding of any service but at the canonical hours. If there has been any gain of civil liberty, it has been at the expense of conscientious rights. Now why is it, that two blessings, so congenial, so mutually consequential, so naturally one, should be thus divided? How is it that they who esteem, and contend to blood for, the one, should neglect, and even betray, the other? Moral causes may be assigned. Man, though responsible to God, feels it not as he does his connection with man. The present is more engrossing than the future. Earth is attractive as is no after-state of being. The men who will otherwise debate all propositions, all testimonies, all terms, will servilely acquiesce in religious dogma. They do not think concerning it at all. They will give themselves no trouble about it. It lies out of their accustomed studies. It may, or may not, be true. They somewhat value it for the sake of others. It has a beneficial influence over certain orders of society. It checks and awes. How is it that these thinkers on every thing

else, never think on this? How is it that they can submit to the decisions of others in this department of enquiry alone? Is it not the most personally interesting and momentous of all questions which can arise ? How is it that the friends of general liberty so enormously stumble here? Lightly they speak of the religious capacities and claims of the poor. In our senate every voice of freedom utters its burning periods and finds its ready champions: but when "the things which belong unto God" are noted, and when every man's rights, in respect of those things, are urged, what syncope is there of ordinary intelligence, what eclipse of common sense! Why should not all be moulded to one religion? What have the poor to do but to follow their appointed guides?-We cannot trust, -we are driven to the avowal, we cannot trust the best friends, the best informed, the best tried, advocates, of civil liberty, with our religious interests. We grieve, we blush, to declare that we see in civil liberty but a most imperfect security for the claims of conscience. But the converse is as historically, as it is gloriously, true. Religious liberty has always won, as its accompaniment, civil freedom. The reason is in Christian. motive. Luther, Zuinglius, and Knox, were true and holy men. They loved the good of their species. They grasped the greater benefit, and secured the less. And, therefore, are we alarmed, because all record and all experience prove, that patriots and deliverers may content themselves with striking off the body's iron, and