Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/33

31 not a peculiar blessing, as well as a peculiar difficulty? We are not surely to be told that all peculiarities are vicious—that every thing which distinguishes our institutions from those of other nations is therefore to be laid aside. We have been in the habit, as yet, rather of seeing other countries aim at conforming to our model, than of accommodating our practice to theirs. We have other peculiarities in this country, which we have not been in the habit of considering less valuable, because not enjoyed by other nations. It has long been the peculiar boast of our country to have united freedom with monarchy—liberty and equal rights, with loyalty to our King. It is peculiar to this country to have purified our church from the superstitions, and freed it from the dominion of Rome; while we retain the blessing of a national, established, and episcopal church. And if then our free monarchy, and episcopal church, are peculiarities which we prize, so, too, perhaps our religious universities are peculiarities not lightly to be cast away. At all events this blending of religion with all education is a peculiarity with which we have no disposition to dispense. It has arisen from viewing religion, not merely as a professional science, but as a practical truth—not merely as one of the faculties, in which degrees are to be taken, but as the sound basis of moral conduct, as essential to the character, not merely of the divine, but of the scholar, the states-